#the human subconscious is profoundly weird

[missroserose]

Okay, dream interpretation tumblr, I’ve got one for you.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had this weird recurring…not even “dream”, but theme within various otherwise-unrelated dreams, of encountering Weird Toilet Setups. Like, I’ll go to the bathroom, and there will be multiple toilets right next to each other, often at different heights or shoved in next to a wall or something else that makes them awkward to use. Sometimes there’ll be maintenance or hygiene issues—pieces falling off, bowls that haven’t been cleaned—but usually it’s just a bunch of mismatched toilets, often with Gigerian conglomerations of pipes attached.

It’s not associated with any particular emotion—the strongest feeling is usually just puzzlement, or maybe annoyance if I’m trying to use the bathroom.

Historically, I’ve never had any particular health issues or hang ups that affected bathroom use, and to the best of my knowledge my toilet training as a kid was uneventful.

So what gives?

[grimeclown]

Ladies is it weird to wake up with no memories and yet create a perfect similucrum of one of your best friends subconsciously when tasked with creating a human shaped homunculus to be your assistant bodyguard and yes-man like is it weird to have someone's face written in your heart so profoundly that you can trace it without even memory to guide you such that you can sculpt him even with the imperfect tools that pseudodivinity allows you and though it is a soulless copy a blank canvas agreeable to your every whim you can't shake the wrongness of it because its not him but you can't even remember who "he" was and you start dressing him up slutty to shake off the discomfort

[tom-failure]

Okay, so I've come up with a mystic messenger horror AU that I'm tentatively calling the Meatverse (ugly name, I'll think of something better later), and I don't have the energy to actually write multichapters, what with juggling making games and getting fired, and drawing gore is not really my strong suit, but I'm DYING to share it. So you'll have my bullet points for it, unedited.

The worldbuilding:

In this au, the world exists on more than just physical level, or plane. In fact, it is divided into two: the cortex and the Red matter, or Meat. All the world as we know it is the cortex, and the discovery and study of the Meat are top secret and virtually unknown. The Meat is a nether layer of the world, inner and hidden, formed by subconscious desire and trauma, where intangible and psychological things are made manifest. It looks literally like the world made of meat and viscera, all pulsing and alive.

Inherently, The Meat is neutral, but it is way more malleable than the cortex, and thus more easily corrupted, and the corruption of the Meat is extremely dangerous to the cortex, which is part of why the existence of the Meat is the secret so heavily guarded

Cortex is the layer that, on the one hand, protects the Meat, and on the other informs it and changes it.

The Meat carries the historical memory, integrates experience, and shapes the future of the cortex. The Meat is responsible for group mentalities and generational trauma

Although formal study of the Meat is secret to the public, there are people who stumble into it by accident, or secretly search and study it on their own. Such individuals are secretly hunted

Sometimes, as a result of experiences, humans become vulnerable points, where the membrane of the cortex wears thin. Such persons become able to greatly affect The Meat, and thus shape the fates of the world. The danger is, they can use it for good or for evil, and their actions are often informed by their experience

The background:

As a result of her upbringing, Rika becomes a vulnerable point, and starts profoundly feeling the effects of The Meat. As a traumatised person, the signals that she is able to accept from Meat are mostly downward trends and experiences of suffering that echo her own on a greater scale. As she begins contemplating suicide, she starts to secretly hang out with the people on the margins of society, on the lowest, bonding with them over their shared experiences. There, she befriends a drug dealer who experiments with less known substances. Once, he tells her about a very dangerous, potentially deadly mixture, which Rika persuades him to let her try.

When she tries it, the mixture alters her vulnerable point state, and Rika witnesses The Meat. For a brief moment, she is scared, but then she immediately becomes fascinated by it. She quickly understands the workings of The Meat and how it is connected to cortex. She spends some time studying it.

After a while, with her studies and drug usage, she furthers her vulnerable point state up to where she could see The Meat at will, without having to rely on either substance or state of mind. She was her own guinea pig, and then later she also recruited the dealer. She searched for ways to bring him to Meat with her, and found that torture and pain were a quick way to create a vulnerable point.

She also wanted to bring V with her, which is where all of their weird conversations about hurting each other came from. But she hated hurting him for a while, and she tried other ways which ultimately did little to create in him a point of vulnerability.

She discovered that Saeran was another Point, and saw in him a prodigy. She used him, however, to try and find a way to make V a Point. Ultimately, when she hurt V and left, that was her way of creating a point of vulnerability, but she didn't want to see it made.

She had Magenta built and created Mint Eye as a twisted way to create a big cluster of vulnerable points, which she would then basically lovebomb, using that as means to bring profound good to the world via Meat. However, for her plan to succeed, she had to create a space of suffering first, which is why she confined her cult to the mansion, to make sure the evil didn't leak. Only the cleansed vulnerable points were allowed out for recruitment, those that did not ooze pain any longer. Those, however, were mostly very broken people, absolutely incapable of any meaningful action at all.

The elixir is used in Mint Eye as a gateway to Meat

Basically a lot of what Rika did there was not just for the 'greater good', but also to bring V at her side. She wanted him to be the change for good, and herself she saw as the harbinger

Eventually, fearing the great pain escaping the mansion, she started fusing the cultists to the house via Meat. For their cortex beings, that meant that they developed a physical dependence on being within, and spending time outside a while drew them back or killed them. She fused herself with the house to nurture them and give them care and love, partly as compensation, and partly to encourage them to stay.

Zen has potential to become a vulnerable point made by suffering if he accepts his pain. He is very close to it, and his prophetic dreams are a symptom.

Yoosung is another type of vulnerable point in the making, built up by love and kindness and acceptance in response to the harsh world, however, his development is hindered by Rika's disappearance. Accepting kindness and love of others and finding the courage to bring forth his own kindness actively can make him a fully realised vulnerable point

Seven is also a vulnerable point, which Rika knows, but she leaves him out of the cult as a way to further Saeran's connection to Meat. Seven is hired by an org studying Meat, and is tasked with searching out potential vulnerable points who will be closely supervised by the org to be supported and killed if they threaten Meat. Which is why he behaves the way he does and tries to stop Yoosung and Zen from becoming vulnerable points by encouraging Zen to be more lighthearted and overconfident, and bullying Yoosung. He has to take meds to take plunges in Meat, and does not have Meat-sight at will.

Saeran develops Meatsight without Rika knowing

The plot:

Joori Nam (MC) is scouted by Saeran as an extremely valuable vulnerable point in the making, with great potential and little effort required to fully realise her. She was supposed to be bait for Seven as Rika realised he is on the hunt for them, but she fell for Jumin, and then was rescued by Jaehee, disrupting the development of her vulnerable point as she, for the first time in her life, was actually cared for like this.

Saeran starts getting impatient and acting out, disrupting the Meat and making the house unstable. By then, he is half-split into several conjoined entities on the Meat level, partly separate but still acting as one. Rika forcefully binds all but one of the entities on Meat level, and partially separates the most docile one

Around then, V's vulnerable point becomes fully realised, and Rika meets with him, telling him it was all a test and that she is ready to accept him with open arms. V is dependent on her, so he gladly agrees, and then Rika puts him in the lowest, secret level of the house, and forms a sort of a chrysalis around him, so that he would sleep and see kind dreams until her cluster is ready and she would have him make the Great Good. His entire cortex-level being falls into a sort of a coma, and Rika tends to him herself.

The mansion grows from the body of Rika on the top, and the body of V on the bottom, but everyone thinks it's just Rika

V disappears and Seven tracks Mint Eye via Saeran. Joori, on her part, actually finds documents on Mint Eye, too. Basically, Jaehee, Jumin, Zen, Yoosung, and Joori at that point have no idea that Meat even exists. Joori finds some notes, but she can't place them and dismissed them

Seven decides to go to Mint Eye with Vanderwood, who is his org partner, also a vulnerable point who has meatsight at-will. Yoosung is not willing to let Seven go alone, and wants to help save his friends, as he doesn't understand the severity of the situation. Yoosung insists Seven allows him to take him with, but Seven flat-out refuses, and Zen secretly volunteers to take Yoosung there and come with him as backup. Zen has a lot of confidence in his abilities and he fancies himself a saviour of all

Separately from them, Joori (who is let in on a little bit as the person who has found the blueprints and notes of Rika's) wants to go with Seven, too, but is dissuaded by Jaehee

Seven gets into Mint Eye secretly (as he thinks, not knowing that Rika's feelers are probing the house). Rika orchestrates the meeting between him and Saeran, aiming to push both their vulnerable points to greater power, but Yoosung and Zen appear suddenly, disrupting the 'reunion'. The dormant entities of Saeran's awaken, he wants to attack Seven, but Zen saves him, and Saeran attacks Yoosung instead, which both Zen and Seven witness. Saeran essentially further disrupts Yoosung's vulnerable point development. And then Rika takes control and all four of them are imprisoned.

When connection with them is lost, Joori persuades Jaehee that they must go and check, and they are unexpectedly joined by Jumin, who pleads with them to go with. He has information that V was last seen around the mansion. Jumin by then is a mess, and Jaehee tries very carefully to keep Joori sane, so that she doesn't jump into his clutches again.

In three, they go to Mint Eye and are also eventually captured because of Rika's total control of the house

They must find a way to reunite and stop her. The Meat exposes everyone's trauma in a visceral way, so to work together they need to admit it and they need to be able to look at each other. But for a lot of them the first reaction is to hide or to make it seem like nothing is wrong with them

Basically I'm thinking that in the process of them working together Yoozens reveal their feelings, because they're kissing in every universe

I imagine Yoosung tries to reason with Rika, but she simply tells him that he must accept her love to fully realise his potential as a vulnerable point. She sees him as a person who will take the gospel of her and V's success and be her successor elsewhere, starting another ripple of good deed through Meat. She basically explains to him about Meat and has him drink her Elixir, and Yoosung actually sees the Meat and understands what she is talking about. She explains the workings of Meat to him, but Yoosung is too concerned with the present state of the house as an enormous heap of pain that is already oozing outwards. Rika keeps him away from his friends a while, treating his eye (yes, he loses sight there in this version as well, this is something that will happen in every universe I have any say in). She gives him elixir, and Yoosung keeps it and hides it. Rika knows Yoosung little, and she can't really understand him well, cortex or Meat. And she relies little on cortex, operating more often on Meat level, so Yoosung can hide stuff from her.

I think all of them will have to drink elixir and face each other in The Meat, and they will have a lot of explaining to do, and a lot of rifts put between them. I imagine the main conflict would be that the only way they see to stop Rika is to destroy her. But she has hold of all the people in the house, and severed from her, they would all likely die. Someone must replace her and ease them out of it, but none of them are strong enough, so whoever stays will not leave alive. Yoosung will immediately volunteer, and Zen will immediately try to stop him.

But somewhere around there Jaehee and Joori will find V and V will actually be the one strong enough and willing enough to fix this.

I imagine Joori will develop some power of her own, which will help them find V

Seven and Saeran will meet in the Meat, too, and there will be some profound connection, maybe Seven will physically connect with Meat-Saeran to give him strength to at least be restored to the previous state, where he was semi-detached from himself, and not almost-detached, but in the process they will become fused. And in helping Saeran Seven will not save him, and will hurt himself

Yeah, it has a happy ending

[fan-atik]

It's incredible. The consequences of her own actions yes, but also the added horror-comedy of ripping off her limbs and just putting it back together. The mindset of "eh, let's just rip her arm of to attatch it later" is both hilarious, horrifying and so non-human- which is something we almost never got to see from the Cullens. Except for some throwaway food/ sleep comments they act almost entirely human (just on a different diet). Of course this is (partly) because Bella is the protagonist and she has a profoundly human perspective. But even then, I would have loved for more supernatural weird shit to be casual like this. When you've been immortal and indestructible for at least 100 years you don't just remain human-like. You develop habits and subconscious thinking patterns. You get used to weird shit like this!! And that's the fun shit to read about!!

headcanon: the boring perfect self control vampire bella thinks she has is a LIE and at one point she caught human scent mid-hunt and snapped. it made her so wild she had to be restrained to the point where things got ugly

i know edward would never dare to do it and meyer would never dare write it and in canon newborn vamp bella would be far stronger than him...

actually. you know who would be stronger than one young vampire? two old vampires. and who would act practical in a critical situation? emmett

imagine edward and bella heading out for a hunt and emmett being like "do you guys mind if i tag along? i feel like snacking". bella's a little mad at the prospect of suddenly having a third wheel (homegirl wasn't planning on just. hunting) but alice gets a weird hunch and goes "no, no, em should go with you" ok nostradamus. he's going.

fast forward they're in the mountain. bella finds having emmett third-wheeling is not half bad. in emmett's head, lowkey it's bella who's the third wheel after so many decades of him hunting together with edward. but nevertheless, it's so fun with her around. all is good until they catch the scent of an entire group of friends hiking just a couple of miles from here, away from all civilization. emmett and edward stop in their tracks, ready to turn around. bella, her guard down, loses it and stars running towards the group, so they have no choice but to charge at her. while strugging to keep her in place, they try to talk her down but she doesn't listen. she doesn't care, she's strong enough to fight them off, and she fights and claws and hisses and breaks bones of whoever gets in her way because there are so many pulses just a few minutes' run away from her and their scent is so sweet and burning and calling, calling, calling to her

while struggling to restrain her, emmett grunts "we have to disarm her". edward catches the image in his head and shouts "no! you can't literally disarm bella!". well, how the hell do you expect us to stop her from massacring all those hikers? we'll just put her back together afterwards. duh!, emmett thinks, and knows he has to act fast so he goes in while bella's busy yanking away from edward's grip and tears off a limb. or two. all 3 of them may or may not be screaming.

a few moments later edward's pinning bella to the ground, holding her face between his palms, forcing her to look at him. her thrashing is not so effective with limited body parts. part of him wants to yell at emmett but that's kind of low priority. he's holding on to the last of his composure while he looks down at bella's feral expression and chants 'baby. i'm so sorry but i'll give you your leg back after you calm down a bit. i won't be able to outrun you if you go chasing after those people now. please calm down. i love you. hold your breath'

just then she listens, stops breathing and her vision refocuses. for the first time she realizes she was on her way to slaughter a bunch of strangers and she broke the arm of the man she loves at least three times when he tried to stop her. she wants to open her mouth and apologize but that will require her to breathe and possibly go crazy with thirst again. so she stares back at edward's panicked eyes and nods at him, her own red eyes just as full of terror.

then she looks over his shoulder and sees emmett waving her severed leg in the air like it's a baseball bat. "hey, did you know that rose wears the same shoe size?"

[funkymbtifiction]

[...] I fear the fact I go through the grieving process and really put myself through it for a couple days before dusting myself off and carrying on is that maybe I'm not really learning lessons about the experience and growing from it. Looking back, these questions go through my head: Did I grieve too quickly? Am I truly healed or am I just repressing these emotions and bottling them up? Are these sad experiences subconsciously affecting my ability to live my life to the fullest and in the present and truly connect with others? How do I know if I truly became a better person because of these hard times, or if I'm just staying stagnant or maybe even regressing?

This is a profoundly mature way of thinking! It's seeking depth and balance. It also sounds head type based. "Am I moving on too fast? What did I learn?" Lots of thinking about grieving, thinking about your responses, thinking about how to learn from things, wondering if you did anything wrong in your process, if you should feel sad longer. I relate. Lots of super-ego here (the need to become a better person), so you must have a pretty strong super-ego influence in your tritype. Could be 6-1, since there's an emphasis on personal growth.

[...] However, that only lasted a few days and I felt healed. However, I wonder did I really heal? Even though I'm not sad anymore, I feel quite guilty that despite crying a river for him in the hospital, I moved on relatively quickly and I don't think about him that much anymore. I'm this way with other things. I can get really emotional for a few days, but the catharsis works on me, but what if I didn't want the catharsis to work that quickly? Am I not giving these human emotions the time and space they deserve? Am I keeping these lessons in mind and growing moving forward, or am I just going back to my old self without any noticeable change or growth?

More super-ego self-analyzing, focusing on self-growth. Am wondering if there's also a 3 here (613). That being said, I relate a lot as a 6w7 to what you have said about analyzing whether you have moved on too soon or whether something has not affected you deeply enough and not being sure if you have healed or not. I know for a fact that I have not healed from a lot of the losses in my life; that it will take time, and that me choosing not to look at them is not helping except as a way of putting "distance" between me and the event. Each year, I cry a little less. But there's nothing bad about healing and coping and moving forward; it doesn't mean I don't still love that person and miss them, or that I don't get tears in my eyes to talk or write about them. It just means that I am doing what I need to do, which is to keep going. (I sometimes wish I could just... stop. Be devastated. That it would somehow prove how much I cared about that person. But I keep going forward.) I also don't always know how much something bothers me at the time, unless it keeps hovering around the edges of my subconscious and nagging at me (but I am secondary Fi and don't have immediate emotional responses).

[...] Also, I feel like it wouldn't really even matter if I journaled or whatever because grief and loss is a universal experience, so anything I've felt has already been expressed and written down by someone else who's gone through this same thing. [...] It feels kinda weird because I don't like that because it makes what I felt less special in a way, but comforting in that if I'm going through something, I can just go online and see that what I'm feeling is normal and find that there are lots of tips for coping with grief (listening to music, picking up hobbies, spending more time with friends, reading books, basically distracting yourself and keeping yourself busy). Loss is hard, but having other people who know what it's like and can give advice makes it not so hard.

This also feels like attachment, 6ish stuff. "This is normal, and here's how to cope with it."

[a-simple-gaywitch]

Embers to Ashes

hotch x unsub!reader

Summary: When (Y/N) leaves the BAU, she doesn’t expect to get wrapped up in a crime spree

Word Count: 2609

Warnings: abusive relationship, pregnancy & mentions of childbirth, typical criminal minds violence

“The real monsters are humans without conscience.” -Robert E. Keller

~

Your decision to leave the BAU was not an easy one, but it was what was best. After your mother fell ill, you decided to move back home to care for her, as she was alone. Your team protested, not wanting you to leave, of course. Penelope fought for you to stay the hardest. She was like the sister you never had.

The team followed you to the airport to see you off. Hugs went around, followed by promises that you’d call when you land. The only person who didn’t hug you was Hotch, which you found weird for a number of reasons. Even Spencer hugged you, and he wasn’t big on physical affection. And you’d always thought you and Hotch were close.

“Hey, promise me you’ll keep in touch,” he said, resting his hand on your shoulder.

“Yeah, of course,” you said.

“Oh, I need another hug!” Penelope said, squeezing you tight again. She’d been crying the whole time and her mascara was running. “I’m gonna miss you so much, Peaches.”

“I’m gonna miss you too, Pen,” you said. You glanced at your watch. “Okay, I really have to go now. I love you guys so much.”

~

You were grocery shopping for your mother when you ran into him. Nicholas Gully, one of your old high school friends.

“(Y/N)? (Y/N) (L/N)?”

“Nick! Hi!” you said, tossing the box of pasta into your shopping cart. “How have you been?”

“Oh, great. What about you? Big FBI agent out at Quantico.”

You laughed awkwardly and rubbed the back of your neck. “Yeah, uh, I actually quit.”

“What? Why? All you talked about in high school was getting into the academy.”

“Uh, well, it’s because of Mom actually. She’s sick. I quit to move back out here and help her until she… Well…”

“Yeah. Well, I’m here if you need to, I don’t know, let off steam?” He handed you a business card. “Here. My number. Give me a call, we’ll go out for drinks or something.”

You smiled. “Thanks, Nick. It was good seeing you.”

~

Your mom died about a month after you moved home. You were an only child, so it was your responsibility to handle all of her affairs. It was stressful, and you felt isolated. Alone.

You looked at all the funeral plans spread out on the kitchen table, and before you knew it, you’d called Nick and asked him to come over.

What happened next was a blur. You buried your mother next to your father, Nick stayed by your side the whole time. While your mind was clouded with grief, you thought the only good thing to come of it was your new relationship with Nick.

He was nice. He treated you well and helped you through your grief. Only, he didn’t like how much you talked to Penelope and Emily, saying that it was unnatural to be so close to your ex-coworkers. So you stopped talking to them.

Nick moved in with you not too long into your relationship. He said that living in your mother’s house alone wasn’t healthy for you. He helped you sort and pack up her belongings, taking the things you weren’t keeping or throwing out to the thrift store.

You were together for about 8 months before your relationship changed.

You hadn’t been feeling well and you had your suspicions. You took a trip to the drug store and bought a few tests while Nick was at work. You took all of them, trying to rule out a false positive.

When you heard Nick come in from work, you decided to tell him.

“Hey, Nick? I have some news,” you said after he put his work bag down on the couch.

“What’s up?”

“Um, you know how I haven’t been feeling well lately? Well, I went to the pharmacy and picked up some pregnancy tests. They were all positive.”

“Are you serious? You’re pregnant?”

You nodded. “I’m calling my doctor first thing tomorrow to schedule an appointment.”

Nick’s tone should have tipped you off to his true nature. But you were in too deep.

~

A few months passed. You were showing significantly, though your doctor was worried about your health. The bags under your eyes grew, and you were showing up to your appointments with more and more bruises on your arms. One day you came in with a poorly concealed black eye.

One day, you came home from a doctor’s appointment to see Nick packing some bags.

“Nick? What’s going on?”

“We’re going on a trip,” he said. “Roadtrip, it’ll be fun.”

“Nick, I’m 7 weeks away from my due date-”

“You’ll be fine,” he snapped, thrusting a bag at you. “Get in the car.”

You headed outside, Nick’s hand firmly on your back. He steered you away from your old clunker towards a shiny new SUV. “Did you buy a new car?” you asked.

“Sure, buy. Let’s go with that.”

“Nick, what did you do? What did you get us into?”

“Don’t worry about it. Get in.”

“Nick-”

“I said, get in.”

~

“Des Moines PD has a case for us,” Penelope said. “As do St. Louis, Louisville, and Charleston.”

“Carjacking?” Morgan asked, flipping through the case file. “Why are they asking us to come in?”

“It’s the same MO,” Hotch explained. “It’s a couple, a man and a woman, presumably his wife or girlfriend. They find a home just outside the city and take the car at night, leaving the previously stolen car.”

“They’re active at night? How do we know it’s a team?” Spencer asked.

“The second victim had security cameras installed. They caught glimpses of the couple, but not enough for us to identify,” Penelope explained.  

“Why are they only bringing us in now?” Emily asked. “It says the first theft was over a month ago.”

“Because this one ended in a murder and assult. The surviving victims are at the hospital. Wheels up in 30,” Hotch said.

~

When the team landed in West Virginia, Hotch divided the team up between the hospital, the crime scene, and the coroner’s office. Hotch and Emily took the hospital to interview the victims. One was a woman in her mid-30s, and the other was her 6-year-old son. The husband had been the murdered victim.

“Hi, Mrs. Foster? I’m Agent Hotchner,” Hotch said, taking a seat next to the woman with Emily. “Would you mind answering a few questions for us?”

“Well, I’m-I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to remember but…”

“Anything you tell us can help us catch these two,” Emily said, gently patting the woman’s hand. “We’re going to try something called a cognitive interview, to see what your subconscious picked up, okay?”

The woman nodded. “Okay.”

“Go ahead and close your eyes,” Emily said. “So, it was late. You and your husband were getting ready for bed. Then what?”

“Neil heard a noise,” she said. “He said it sounded like a man. He grabbed Micah’s little league bat from beside the front door. He told me to wait inside. Micah had fallen asleep on our couch and came to see what was going on. I-I heard Neil yell and I heard a gunshot. I ran outside and I saw a couple. A man and a woman.”

“What can you tell me about them? What did they look like?”

“I didn’t see the man too well, but the woman, well, I only saw her face. But she looked bad.”

“What do you mean?” Emily asked.

“Well, her skin was sunken and sallow. She had bruises all over. She looked like she was ready to drop at any second.”

“Okay. What happened then?”

“Neil was bleeding on the ground. I-I ran over to him and felt for his pulse. It was already gone. Then the man hit my head with the gun, and I fell to the ground. But Micah- I didn’t know Micah followed me. The man pointed his gun at Micah. I was terrified. I thought he was going to shoot my son, too. But then the woman stood in front of the gun. She started pleading with the man. I was fading in and out of consciousness, but I heard her.”

“Nick, don’t!”

“What did I tell you? You don’t get to call me that, whore.”

“I-I’m sorry, sir. But, please, don’t hurt him. He’s just a boy.”

“He saw our faces. You know the police are already on our trail. We can’t have a kid squealing to the cops.”

“No, I… I won’t let you.”

“You won’t let me?”

“He hit her,” Mrs. Foster said. “Hard. It was so hard I thought he shot her, too.” She shook her head. “After that, he knocked me out. I don’t know what happened next. I just remember waking up here.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Foster,” Hotch said. “This was very helpful.” Hotch and Emily got up to leave.

“Wait, Agent Prentiss,” she called after Hotch left the room. Emily turned around. “When you find them, go easy on the woman.”

“Why would you want us to do that?” she asked.

“I work at a battered women’s shelter. I see women like her all the time. She’s profoundly abused. She’s not a criminal, she’s a victim.”

~

Micah Foster was able to give a detailed description of the man to the sketch artist. Thanks to his description, they were able to track him down outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. What they weren’t counting on was seeing you, in the passenger seat.

Nick didn’t want to go down without a fight. But his idea of a fight was to use you as a human shield. He held you in front of him, his arm bracing against your throat. He had a gun in his other hand, training it on the team.

“You shoot, you hit her!” he said, pressing harder on your throat.

“Okay, okay,” Morgan said, holding his gun up in surrender. “We won’t shoot. Just let (Y/N) go.”

Nick turned the gun and pressed it to your temple. “Why are you so concerned about her?

“Because she’s a person,” Derek said, trying to negotiate. “She doesn’t need to get hurt.”

A gunshot went off. You screamed and stumbled forward, Morgan catching you. Nick fell to the ground, dropping his gun and gripping his thigh. Hotch had snuck up behind and shot him in the leg.

~

The next thing you knew, you were in an interrogation room with Hotch and Emily.

“(Y/N), what happened?” Emily asked you, her voice gentle. “You look awful. What did he do to you?”

Your eyes were trained on the table. “Nothing. He treats me with nothing but respect. I did this to myself.”

“(Y/N), we all know that’s not true,” Emily said. “Talk to us. You know us.”

You kept your eyes on the metal table and you stayed quiet.

“Damn it, (Y/N)!” Hotch yelled, slamming his hands on the table. You flinched back, closing your eyes and wincing like you were bracing for a hit. Hotch took a step back. “Prentiss, take over.”

He left the interrogation room and stormed over to the second room where Morgan and Reid were interrogating Nicholas.

“Hotch-”

“What the hell did you do to her?” Hotch nearly screamed, his blood boiling.

Nick smiled. “I didn’t do anything, she did it all to herself.”

“We both know that’s not true, you piece of-”

“Aaron!” Rossi said, cutting him off. He then proceeded to pull Hotch from the interrogation room. “What the hell is going on with you?”

Hotch took a deep breath, rubbing his hand over his face. “You saw her, Dave. You saw what that asshole did to her. You saw her flinch away from me. That’s a woman who has faced down some of the worst humanity has to offer, and she’s been so badly abused that she’s…”

“Aaron, you know what abuse does to people. We’ve seen it more times than I ever want to count.”

“But it’s never been someone we know. It’s never been someone we love.”

“Ah. So that’s what this is about.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Why don’t you sit this one out? Prentiss and I can handle it.” Rossi walked into the room and sat next to Emily. Emily had given you a glass of water.

“(Y/N), why did you save the mother and her son?” she asked you.

“I don’t know,” you said, twisting the glass around in your hands.

“(Y/N).” Emily reached out and put her hand on yours. “You specifically looked out for the boy. Why?”

A tear rolled down your cheek. “Nick made me leave mine,” you whispered.

“What?”

“He said she would slow us down, that she was a burden. He made me leave her at a church. I didn’t even get to hold her.” After that, you broke down sobbing. Emily slowly crossed to the other side of the table and cautiously put her arm around you.

~

The team worked out a deal for you with the DA. You would be acquitted if you testified against Nick, and you would be closely watched by the team.

“She can’t keep sleeping on the couch in the conference room, Hotch,” Rossi said as the team gathered in the bullpen. You were asleep and the team wanted you to have peace. “She can come stay with me. Lord knows I have the space.”

“Wait, why should she stay with you? She’s my best friend,” Penelope argued. “She can stay with me.”

“Babygirl, you don’t have a spare room,” Derek reminded her. “I can take her in.”

“She just spent the better part of two years under the thumb of an alpha male, do you think she’d feel comfortable staying with another one?” Emily said.

“Did any of you think maybe she should make her own choice?” Spencer piped up. “I mean, she hasn’t been able to make her own choices, I think we should at least give her that.”

“Reid is right,” Hotch said. “We should let her make the choice. And please, don’t pressure her. She’s not the same (Y/N) she was when she left. She’s been through hell and back.”

~

In the end, you chose to stay with Aaron. Something about him made you feel safe. Slowly but surely, you started warming up again. You spent your days taking care of Jack when Hotch was on cases. When Aaron was home, he spent time with you and Jack. The two of you grew closer and closer.

You’d stayed with Aaron for a few months before there was a shift in your relationship. You weren’t sure when it happened, but you and Aaron were closer. You became more comfortable with physical contact, and you found yourself curling up on the couch with Aaron for movie nights after Jack went to bed.

You kissed Aaron first. He’d come back from a case with a book he knew you’d been wanting to read. It was something simple, but it meant the world to you, knowing there was someone who listened to you and wanted to do something nice for you.

Your relationship blossomed from there, and Aaron made sure to show you he respected you and never wanted to hurt you. Of course, there were bad days and there were days you argued, but Aaron never raised a hand against you. He never wanted you to experience the pain Nick caused you ever again.

~

“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is like the difference between a lightning bug and the lightning.” - Mark Twain

[godlytransurfer]

This witchcraft vs the law of assumption general debate really makes me wonder. (Remembering you all that this is my thoughts and I still respect what you chose to believe. This was just my experience.):

As someone who prior to knowing the law was once associated with beings like deities and higher selves, and then took them out of my reality because it wasn’t always serving me that much for my specific purposes (then again most likely Bc of what I assumed of them), once the witchcraft and divination communities got their public hype on apps like TikTok and so on, I wondered how the hell everyone WAS CONVINCED they were contacting entities like Lucifer and Aphrodite and u know, big names like that for the sake of manipulating a candle, from smaller to bigger things. AND OPENLY POSTED ABOUT IT AT THAT.

But let’s be real here people went public about the more common and popular definition of shifting, so I’m not even gonna drag anyone at this point. That’s not even the point of this post.

Now hear me out y’all:

So at this point what was happening back then was that everyone and their mother thought they had a connection with big names like that. And I get that allegedly, even with the law of assumption, it wouldn’t be surprising if these beings if even existent at all and not just assumed into non physical materialization, would be omnipresent anyways. That is not surprising for a big deity / definition of a god to do. But I was so confused when I left and all I saw everyone was doing this.

I wondered profoundly how they legit thought they had been chosen amongst so many ppl in this world to be doing weird tricks in their room with something big that allegedly required tons of respect. (I mean if ur gonna assume they exist I think mutual respect would be obvious here as something u might wanna take into consideration.)

At this point, I assume that these things exist and only come into contact with you if you want to/allow it. But it was weird to see it with several people. Still deciding if that was a symptom of final things happening in 3D before I decided it didn’t exist, and if it did it was not gonna be in my world. I also wondered about the possibility that it was my god self/subconscious showing me that the way we create and convince ourselves of these things was through assuming because back then I didn’t consciously knew much about the law.

I do believe if you chose to work with beings and just like people you assume the best, they can do a lot for you. Or obviously not if you assume trickery of them. I had a very decent experience. However, I also can never seem to shake off the fact that they are all most likely either a door opened by our subconscious of imagined powerful people, or that when humans use that for explanation of stuff moving around their house or that things happen when they have this imaginary friend stuff taken to a next level... it’s easier for them to believe in those external non physical sources than it is to believe that even those entities they imagined into non physical 3D being are in fact their subconscious fully.

Cuz you know, I will respect everyone’s beliefs because I’ve been there but... how ironic that it’s easier for human beings to accept that there’s a ghost or a deity going around doing stuff for them instead of their actual mind/awareness power. But as long as we don’t limit ourselves and the results are here I think that’s what really matters. I am a neville follower for sure because when I found him, he was the first person I ever saw that could put into words what I only felt in the depths of my being how to do. But I do admit that if it wasn’t for other experiences prior to this, my logical self would’ve had been more limited by the law when it comes to things that come without a bridge of events. Fortunately I have inevitably evolved from such limitations without succumbing to fear.

Just food for thought.

[dballzposting]

OK I'm gonna say what I wnated to say in the orignal post but I didn't becasue the post got too long. I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna say it

I've joked before that Gohan in this sort of environment has to go into the woods to have some alone time & to j*rk off sometimes. And that's funny and all. But now I'm gonna be really serious about it

(content is a focus on what sexual repression does to a mf, trauma responses, and at the end a super swaggy Gohan & Videl moment)

[DISCLAIMER: I don't know things. ]

And I don't mean to startle anyone but I'm trying to be factual and realistic here. Living in a time of "peace" but being functionally trapped at home, in the middle of nowhere, during his pubescent years, was not healthy or good or fun. Now I've no doubt that Gohan was traumatized enough to be sufficiently shutdown when it comes to the arduous matters of romance & sex (requiring both a connection with basic instinct and a functioning social engagement system), and he is only HALF human, so you could argue that this simply wasn't a concern.

But Long Story Short ... To Set The Scene of my Thinking Here ...

Humans are profoundly loving animals. In theory a healthy human has access to innate & plentiful libidinal reserves and is able to release them when due, throuhg romance & sex, and it keeps them in good health. Many if not most modern cultures promote a disconnect from one's instincts and deepest feelings, and especially in the subject of sexual things. Sex is made perverse and bad and weird. It's exhausting to have children in most societies nowadays and it is something that both sexes fear and are unprepared for. The prevailing Western philosophy of assuming a mind/body disconnect worsens everything so much. Everybody is carrying trauma to some degree becasue nobody knows how to heal from things, and that disrupts basic survival things like appetite, sleep, bonding capabilities, and sex drive. I know im just saying words to you and offering no sort of evidence or proof. And I know that it sounds upsetting & and I've been upset many times reading my little books. But you can trust me. Long story short I'm good for it

So my point is that when I said that Gohan finds a habit of repression when fulfilling his role in the family, one of the things that he represses is any and all libidinal stock or potential that he has. Simply becasue Where is he meant to find outlet. But those sorts of energies are in him somewhere becasue that's just how we're built

And I get it. I bet sometimes the pretty colors in his textbooks seemed especially alluring. I bet he subconsciously gave numbers personalities and I bet he had peculiar favorites. I bet he tried to pretend that he was being totally normal when he was reading a biology textbook and his eyes immediately jumped to the part of the page that had the word "sex" written in it, and that it was just coincidence and that he didn't feel mysteriously fixated or disturbed at all.

But listen man. It's Not So Simple that he can just go out into the woods alone and jerk off or something. If his Only Problem In Da World was just that he had no one to love, then yeah maybe that would be his next best solution, and he would do that and be mature about it. But that's really just a symptom of a greater complex of problems. His problems are that he doesnt have anyone to love, he doesnt want anyone to love, he doesnt think that he needs anyone to love, he doesnt feel like he has any love to give, he doesnt actually care, he thinks he doesnt care, he's BUSY, he has better things to care about, HE DOESNT UNDERSTAND IT, he doesnt like it, and he's afraid of it. And he thinks it's bad.

Again if he wasn't so fucked up then he would be able to calmly observe the seamless connection running from abstract feelings through to physical engagement and how it's all equally important to the lived experience of the organism, and he would be able to make the entitled choice to go out and observe romance in his life or not. But he's all fucked up & constricted & it makes him crazy & paranoid and so bascially he feels like the part of him that jerks off in the woods is EVIL.

I mean sometimes he's cool with it. Sometimes he really does seem more well-adjusted than other times, and life is good, and he's alright. And then other times the shadow of the past has him in its clutches again and he doesnt feel okay and he feels like nothing is okay and he doesnt like what's going on inside.

Look it's very simple: It's just that the idea of himself that he has in his head, the person he wants to be, the role he wants to play in the household - it would be VERY IMPROPER for that person to harbor any sexual potential, any interest, any desire, any thoughts whatsoever. That simple guys.

He wants to be his mother's son and a great older brother. But at the same time he's becoming a man and it's odd to still live under his mother's rule. But he wouldnt have it any other way obviosuly like he's needed here and is probably too young to go out on his own anyway, right? But maybe it's weird caring for a child that isn't his. But of course that's complete bullshit becasue he loves his baby brother to bits.

The situation is what it is and sometimes it makes a lot of sense and there is a lot of love to go around. Sometimes Gohan understands that one day he may start a family of his own, but he doesn't know when that would be, and it isn't relevant now, and he's not thinking of it. So it's all fine.

But he's not the most stable individual and sometimes he's in the shit. Sometimes life is scary and he tenses up hard against it, and I don't think that he would be able to read these patterns, or to be able to realize that the sense of fear comes from within and not from external stimuli. There are things from the past that he hasn't healed from and ways that his current situation is keeping him down and sometimes that makes him crazy! And he always believes his fear unequivocally as being entirely founded and objective. And his perspective becomes out of proportion.

It's very simple. It's literaslly just the fear of somebody sitting at the dinner table and being Absolutely Completely 100% Terrified. Terrified at what? Well fear needs an object. But it doesnt have to be especially clear. It could be vague. It could just be a feeling. It's just a fear for the abstract notion of Being Bad, or Being Caught, or being Embarrassed, or antyhing like that. And fear always attracts its object too, so if he's afraid of thinking Bad Thoughts, then he just may have them.

I want to be clear: I'm zeroing in on this subject specifically, and while I do believe his libidinal energies were not handled with respect and that this incurred its own type of misery, this is overall Not A Big Takeaway from this part of his life. In hindsight, he mostly remembers studying and avoiding big feelings. It's true that repression leads to perversion when things do bubble up through the cracks, but he didn't have the fortitude for even that. He didn't have distinct fantasies. He didn't ever look at a nudie magazine. He never knew enough to attach an image to his feelings. He just didn't develop on that aspect of himself at all. No developing of tastes, no interacting much with his body, no nothing. It wasn't even all repression - it was just simply a seed not sprouting because you never watered it! There were bigger things to deal with, surely.

But he was also a teenage boy. And you know how it is.

Feelings aren't logical, and in this case he never thought this through because - well, what a horrible thing to address! But here's a breakdown of what was going on in his fearful little head. (And this is something that, I think, a lot of people may relate to in little ways:)

I want to be a good person.

Making people happy makes me a good person.

Therefore, if I make people happy, then I will be a good person.

My mom is happy when I listen to what she says and respect her rules.

She has always looked down on playboy types and warned strongly against "fooling around" with girls; it is a bad thing to do.

If I do what's bad, I am not a good person.

If I go against my mother's wishes, she will be unhappy, and I will be a bad person.

Therefore, I will do what she says, and not date until marriage.

If sex is bad, then engaging with it is bad.

Therefore, in order to not be bad, I will avoid it and not think of it until marriage.

Mindset can affect your heart and soul as much as your head.

If I want to be a good person, then I will have only good thoughts.

I want to be a good person.

I don't want to think of bad things.

Therefore, i will not, and do not want, to think about sex.

Sex is an important part of the natural world.

The natural world is beautiful.

I would never shame the natural world.

Therefore, sex in nature is fine and good.

Therefore, sex is only bad when it's me.

Therefore, it is alright to learn and read about sex as it pertains to science and nature.

Sex is an inappropriate subject.

Sex is not family-friendly.

I want to be a good member of the family.

Therefore, sex can have no place here.

Sex is bad to do, and a bad subject to talk or think about in the house.

Therefore, as long as I am a part of this family, sex is doubly-bad.

If I am a member of this family, and if I harbor sexual thoughts or inclinations, then that is a horrible moral contradiction.

Therefore, I cannot do both.

I want to be a good member of this family.

I cannot be a good member of this family if I have sexual thoughts.

Therefore, I cannot have sexual thoughts.

But that makes it seem like it's a logic puzzle. In the world of feelings, and the world of the trauma-induced habit of "if i face this or think about this or feel this then i will die i will most certainly die and be dead and go to hell for forever," it's just that - he doesn't think that he can be a good son or big brother if he is also a sexual person, and a such he feels T.E.R.R.I.B.L.E and TERRIFIED when he does feel sexual things, no matter how abstract or minor.

To loop back - it's the fear of someone sitting at the dinner table with their joyous younger brother and contented mother (neither of which are mind readers), and trying to be Normal, and having no reason to Not be normal becasue he's Done Nothing Wrong, but he FEELS like he's done something terribly terribly wrong, and fear needs an object, and he hates himself, and he doesnt trust himself to be normal, and he feels like he should be taken out back and shot, becasue IT'S REALLY SCARY TO CARRY LIBIDINAL ENERGIES IN AN ENVIRONMENT THAT IS SEVERELY NON-CONDUCIVE FOR THEM.

It's that simple. He just becomes afraid of his own feelings.

I don't know why this post is so long.

He gets scared and really FRUSTRATED sometimes becasue SOMETIMES it's not an issue. He is MUCH HAPPIER, he thinks, when he is able to put it out of his head entirely - those times when he feels peaceful, and easy, and he is able to sleep at night, and be normal, and be helpful, and be good. Why can't all the times be like that?

But life is necessarily transient + he's not that stable as a person + it's not healthy to just Not Feel Things like that = it comes up eventually. Probably in stupid ways. Triggers he can't parse. He saw a pretty flower and started thinking about bees and pollination and it set him on a spiral. When people are afraid of things that's all it takes. And when there are things that need to come out then that's all it takes.

So then you get those periods of time where he feels like a monster in his own home despite conducting himself with the most careful and mindful footsteps that anyone could muster. And he decides that Yknow What He's gonna have to be Mature about this and Do something about this evil within becasue it's His Responsibility to watch himself.

So he goes out into the woods and writes in his diary and watches the river for hours and hours and sometimes he jerks off in those damn woods and soemtimes he Just Cant Muster the Courage. Sometimes it comes easily and it's not a big deal and nature is beautiful and there's nothing wrong with him and actualy it makes sense ETC ETC and then other times he is a Beast Of Burden and he is out here Befouling these woods.

He doesn't realize it, but he's trying to just brute force himself into being who he wants to be - and duely, he becomes angry/irritated/upset when that falls through. Sometimes he does good, so good in fact that life feels so peaceful and calm, and life is good, and he's happy, maybe even adventurous, maybe even spontaneous, he may even be comfortable enough to open his mind to unconsidered terrain - and that bit of openness invites what's been hiding to come out, which is a bunch of bad stuff and anger and fear and shame and whatnot, including (but not limited to) sex as a possibility. So that's the cycle - every time he comes into a bit of expansion, he doesn't have the space or strength to move on from the lurking pain, so he shuts down again against it.

So he'll be doing good and fine and then one day he jolts awake in the middle of the night with the feeling of He Cannot Be Here in this House with his Brother and Mother right now. Like he needs to get OUT

So he goes out into the woods.

And don't think he doesnt get paranoid. He takes the time to suppress his ki. But then he also starts thinking about how other people have the power to suppress their ki and really he has no idea who could be out here in these woods right now. So then he spends hours just sitting and sensing out ki.

And rather than getting out and having some time alone and chilling out and calming down, he instead is afraid of Not being alone, so half of his mind is back at the house repeatedly scanning and checking and re-checking for his mother's and brother's ki signatures to make sure that they're there and they're staying there and they're not moving and they're not going anywhere and he's alone right now.

This is easier at night when evryone's sleeping becasue they're for sure not moving. But there's one night where little Goten can't sleep so he goes out and catches fireflies in the yard. And he doesnt know where Gohan is but he disappears at night sometimes so he deosnt worry about it. He just goes on catching fireflies.

But Gohan in one of his worst moments had been sitting by some stream trying very hard to calm down, and this unexpected shift in the placement of ki back at the house SCARED HIM SHITLESS.

Imagine you're Goten catching fireflies and then out of the blue your older brother shambles out of the woods looking like he just saw maybe 30 ghosts. And he asks you why you're awake and out and you say Just 'Cause. And he really does look like dogshit and it unnerves you because Gohan can be very warm and attentive. But also you have seen him during his weird periods and you dont know what it is, but it's just the way it is.

Compare this with the teenhood that Goten has. Goten straight-up has girlfriends. Straight-up. Straight-up. He also experiences sexual interests. But he's completely healthy and expressive about it. And he's a lot less of a weirdo for it.

My point in making this entire post was actually so I could say something about Gohan and Videl.

I was just gonna say that it would be cool for Gohan to work throuhg this once he does take on a romantic & sexual partner.

I always thought that Gohan would only work through his inner madness when he witnesses Goten moving through the ages: it reminds Gohan of the psychological backdrop that he had at that age, and he only faces it then. Otherwise, it just may never come up in a way that matters.

For example, Goten having a safe home at age 4 made Gohan very proud and grateful and relived, but also gave rise to a twitching-rage-oscillating-with-a-wild-paranoia, and he had to realize that he never mourned his lack of a safe childhood (jury is still out on if he processes the overwhelming fear or not).

So when Goten gets into his teen years and starts meeting girls & dating girls ... oi, it gets a little weird.

Chichi obviously doesn't want him to be dating before marriage, or to be fooling around with those city girls he meets at school. And she wants Gohan to talk some sense into him. But Gohan has always kept close to his principle of doing right by Goten and leading him down a good path. And part of him knows that Goten is happy being able to have friends and meet girls. And another part of him really just Doesnt Want To Think About It or be involved in this conversation at all. And another huge part of him is like .... totally up in arms about it.

When people have unresolved distress regarding past treatment or experiences, they tend to push that treatment unto or recreate that pain for others in a cycle of reenactment.

So it's like. He kind of wants to lock goten in his room and make him study. And he kind of wants him to feel debilitating shame. And he kind of wants him to hate himself and punish himself. And he kind of wants him to pay for helping to create the situation that forced Gohan to do all that to himself.

^ ENTIRELY ILLOGICAL and NOT AT ALL how Gohan actually feels or believes in. NOT EVEN CLOSE. We've been throuhg this. He loves his family and knows better. Yadda yadda

BUT I'M TELLING YOU that there shouldn't be moral implications attached to feelings, they're just how your body communicates with you and how you interact with the world. He feels that way becasue as a teenager, his freedom as an animal was infringed upon, and that kicked up some self-defending anger and resentment; THE LEAST OF HIS REPRESSED ANGER, no doubt, but it is living in him nonetheless. He should not act on those feelings, but he should feel them to move throuhg them. But that's near impossible if he feels like he's a bad awful person who should go to hell if he feels them.

He feels that way because he mistreated himself and held himself to bad faith, and that hurt, and that's unresolved, so some part of him wants to repeat it in an attempt to resolve it. I mean that's just reenactment for you.

He doesnt act on this resentment and he probably just gives Goten some safety advice and to abstain until marriage and to be kind to everyone and to be careful with his heart and the hearts of others. And that's it.

Gohan doesnt want Goten to have the teenhood that he did, becasue it sort of sucked, and he has the fortitude to be focused about his priorities.

But the whole thing definitely stirred up some nebulous bullshit from inside. Some real mysterious and nefarious bullshit that makes no sense & feels like nothing & that encourages him to drown himself in his work for a few days. And Videl notices that he;'s being straight-up funny about this and she confronts him about it. And the conversations just roll from there. It'd be cool if Gohan could come to face and work through some of his madness.

Falling in love with Videl unlocked some repressed energies of his, and that was cool, but it wasn't not everything, becasue why would it be. He hasn't been able to reconcile with the pain of shame emanating from his teen years, and his more primal layers haven't yet forgiven him for treating himself so poorly regarding.

It would be cool if he could, at this point in his marriage, have the stability to deal with what was locked up in his past and that still haunts him. If he could, yknow, come to want and enjoy sex with his epic wife. In a way more swaggy than what they had before.

Becasue what they had before was definitely, for the necessity of the both of them, Careful and Gentle and Mindful and appropriate and TBH i wouldn't call it vanilla becasue it can be a terrifying thing to blatantly walk into the primal and cosmic reality of male & female contrast and unity, and they're brave for that. But from an outside perspective Yeah it was well-organized missionary what do you want me to say.

LITERALLY MY POINT is just that it would be cool if Gohan could open up a little bit more to that. Laugh and joke a bit more about that sort of stuff. Lean into the good things. Discover and nurture a sexual fire for his wife, and to not be afraid of it.

And if he got more comfortable with this sort of stuff, then he would be interested in asking her questions that he was never okay with asking before. As in, connecting with her about things that he wasn't connected with himself about before.

Such as: "I know that you weren't allowed to date before me. But did you ever WANT to date? Did you have any crushes?"

and she would tell him that yeah she had a little crush on a boy once in middle school. And maybe once or twice in high school. And she never kissed anyone before but the first time she really wanted to was at a birthday-party-sleepover where she came close to kissing the hostess/birthday girl.

And he says "What." and she says that there was this girl in middle school whom she hated. Because she was a superficial and mean little cunt. But she invited Videl to her birthday party one year (probably because Videl had money). and Videl didnt get much female comraderie both due to her line of hobby (martial artist) and intimidating demeanor (she was a little rough around the edges, because her inborne aggression was consistently encouraged by her hobby, and becasue she was socially weird for having lost her mother and for people treating her special due to her family name). So she was looking forward to this slumberparty.

And she sets up this story like it's not a big deal, but she includes details like how she had helped the girl's mother clean the kitchen, and how that tired mother gave her the most thankful smile, and Videl was used to being treated like an adult, but being that appreciated by this exhausted mother made her realize that her cunt classmate maybe wasnt so unforgivable.

And then even thouhg Videl and this girl has never gotten along, while the sleepover was in effect, it was like none of that mattered. they werent smiling or laughing together, but they were more than diplomatic. And at some point the girl's extensive lip gloss and eye shadow collection had gotten dredged up and put on display in the bathroom; and the other girls were moving in and out to fuss with them; and then they moved on to the Super Smash Bros tournament; but some struck up convos in the kitchen; and Videl herself was the last to cycle into the bathroom becasue she didn't quite see the appeal in outdated lipgloss colors; but at this age she was torn between wanting to be different and wanting to be the same; and she has the capacity to enjoy pretty colorful sparkly things like other girls; so Videl drifts into the bathroom and half-closes the door out of habit before she realizes that the cunt birthday girl was in there putting on lipgloss; and without fanfare or much emotion at all, she tells Videl to come over so that she can "put some pretty" on that face of hers.

And Videl really does hate this girl but she really loves the female comraderie hanging thick in the air tonight, she loves the gentle touch of the girls braiding each others' hair which contrasted sharply with the touch of an opponent in battle. She hates this girl for her snotty attitude and her petty lies and her superficiality; and for her kindly and overworked mother; but Videl can't pretend that she didn't notice the lack of a man's coat in the coat closet, or the way that her mother had said that the party ended at 9 AM sharp becasue she had to leave for work then; and Videl on some level wants to teach this girl a lesson for always treating her in bad faith, but her innate pull for justice is dutifully processing newfound sympathy in current time; and she lets this girl put eyeshadow on her face that is SO not her color and Videl KNOWS that she had chosen that to be shitty; but she also is coming to see that this girl's cuntiness is a wall that means absolutely nothing to her; and she is starting to see through it; and the way that this girl has invited her to her birthday party despite their historical shared animosity, and the way that she is allowing them to be alone together in this bathroom, is all proof that this poor girl doesn't really stand up for what she says or does; and Videl feels pity; and she smells blood in the water; and she feels read for filth; and she feels defensive and offensive; and she feels like the harbinger of truth; and she is 14 years old and is seriously about to kiss this girl on the mouth in the most cynical and heartfelt way.

But she doesn't, becasue she didnt want to risk getting kicked out early or embarrassing herself.

And she tells this story and Gohan says Ummmmmmmmmmmm. He says "...Ok......So.... 14 is a weird age huh.....?" ready to pass it off. And Videl says something like "Yeah I didn't know what I wanted then. Well I knew that I wanted to close that door and break into her wretched soul, and I knew that one kiss would undo her, but that it would also damn me, like a hook in my lip, and I guess I gave us mercy then. But seriously. I didn't even know if I wanted True Blue or Orange Sparkle lipgloss. I was just as confused as she was."

And Gohan is like Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

".....But that was .. just then, right? At that ... all-girls sleepover? N...Never again?"

"Oh yeah. I grew out of my teenage angst a little and started being a better person - and really meaning it too. After that I only wanted to kiss girls whom I thought could handle it."

"........................................You wanted to kiss more girls?"

"Oh, it's no big deal, like I said, I never dated. And I never had any major crushes, really."

"...........Okay. So you ... grew out of that? .... You stopped ... looking at girls?"

"Oh, looking is a whole different story. I got too adroit at fraternizing with girls, as a girl, but - before I opened my mouth, there were some girls who would flourish under a secret, but scrutinizing, gaze."

and Gohn is like Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. What.

And then she says: "Look, Gohan, it's like this. Remember when we met, I wore a lot of baggy clothes? It's what I was comfortable in. And I liked how I looked. But that's not what I thought was beautiful. I thought other girls were beautiful, but that's not what I was comfortable wearing. And to my credit - things change, I've changed, and I started wearing more form-fitting and girly clothes. I've switched pale pink for bright red. I think it's beautiful. But there are still things that I think are beautiful but wouldn't wear. So that's why I appreciate other girls."

And this really has made everything worse for Gohan. Like this hasn't helped at all. At first it was just the one girl in middle school. Now it's seeming like she liked more girls and many girls and in fact Never Stopped Looking At Girls.

And he keeps trying to get her to say what he wants her to say, but she keeps throwing his attempts.

He's like "......Okay, back to those crushes that you said you had in high school. You said there were some boys. Tell me about that. I only ever met Sharpener and Erasa, none of your other friends."

"Oh, those two.... yeah, no, I never liked Sharpener, if that's what you're worried about. Those two just weren't my type."

"....Those two?!"

Like this is spiraling fast.

She keeps saying that it's not a big deal but then says something about a woman in the most poetically bloody yuri way. She's like "It wasn't a big deal Gohan it was just a moonlight dream that I shared with a smooth-legged girl as we touched hands and she told me that she had to go catch her train and I told her that my heart had never strayed form my hometown but it just might tonight as long as she catches that train. And we saw the peaceful death of the universe in each other's eyes but it's not like I ever thought about her again even though I can remember in perfect detail the way her hair befell her shoulders as she caved in to sadness. Calm down it was a long time ago."

And Gohan is like. WHAT ?

Gohan has never had any thoughts on homosexuality before but now he's having to think about it. And what he's thinking is that he has cursed his wife to a life of never kissing a woman because he married her and she is obligated to only him now. And he had no idea that she felt this way and she's acting like it's not a big deal. And she doesnt think that this is gay at all btw. Maybe it's not. Maybe it is. But she doesnt think it is.

And now he can't fucking sleep and he doesnt know what to do and he was getting comfortable with opening up to sexual feelings in a deeper way with her but now Homosexuality has been thrown into the mix and he truly doesnt know what to make of it. And at some point he prods her awake and she's like "what" and he says "What should I do? Should I put on a shiny red sequin dress? Would-would that make you happy?"

And Videl wakes up more fully and is like. "What? I never said anything about a shiny red sequin dress? Where did you get that from?"

And he says "It just seems like something that you'd find beautiful. I don't know. Is that what you want? Should it be a blood red or a fiery red?"

They don't acquire such a dress btw but the next day he does dress in an apricot shirt + wine red pants + magenta tie combo becasue he is being mindful of her tastes. And she muses "I don't think that you've ever worn that tie and shirt together" and he says that he hasn't because the shirt is more orange and the tie is more cold and he doesnt think that they match well.

Okay that's my post. Now is a good time to say that I have a lot of other things that I should be doing but I've wasted my day on this because I thought that if I got it out of my head then I'd be more productive. But it's been literal hours. Like literally all day. I don't even get it. Hit like if you get it

It's just that well simply put Gohan didnt have any time to himself ever. There was always bullshit happening. Then Goku died and Goten was born and Gohan had to keep his mother from falling apart and his baby brother healthy and happy. And it's rewarding work. But yknow

When he wasn't tending to the baby or helping with other domestic chores, he was in his room studying. It's nice to learn about the world he fought so hard to save. It's also nice to not have to have a relationship with his body (as with fighting) so that it's easier to dissociate from all the bullshit. Academia was a lifeline out. It was also a definitive "good" thing to be doing. It was also an escape. And also a source of the stress that he's so accustomed to. And yknow. Maybe the letters started to dance on the page after a while. A life unlived will find life in other places. Maybe the historical figures were his friends. Maybe he memorized chemicals like one would memorize constellations. Maybe different mathematical functions began to represent and facilitate different experiences of emotion. You know how it is

I mean maybe not. Maybe he got out enough and was present enough to not dip into that. If his time alone was really that needed, then I imagine that he would get angry if interrupted; but I don't imagine that he snapped often when his mother called him to attention or when his brother needed something from him. I think that he finds fulfillment and peace in his family and he wants to be there with them. But I think that he also finds habits of repression or self-denial.

I'm not saying that he represses all of his anger, because he doesn't. What he does repress is infinite amounts of survival rage. What he doesn't repress - and what seems like he's not even aware of when he expresses it - is sharp annoyance. A mild example would be when he snapped at Goten for bothering him during his training, which was super funny. A more poignant example is Every Time Somebody Insults his Great Saiyaman Persona somehow. First he was interjecting into his classmates' (strangers!) conversation to correct their misnaming of the new hero, and he didn't seem to notice how rude his tone was or how surprised his classmates were. Then later he stopped two reckless drivers, and they made fun of his goofy persona, and Gohan (without resistance) just threw a petulant fit - and he did not seem to notice how he was Destroying The Road by stamping his foot.

My favorite example was when Krillin told him he looked dumb. I should probably get screenshots. Gohan's Eyebrows Twitched and Reared like Rattlesnakes. And his passive aggression was enough to constituent manslaughter. Masked behind saccharine positivity. It was a vile display. What do YOU know about Fashion, Quiverin..! (<- What we sometimes call Krillin in my house becasue he's always cringing and quivering and being fearful lol.)

OK I didn't get screenshots but I have this timestamped video from the youtube.

And it makes sense that Gohan is super defensive about The Great Saiyaman. It's the first thing that he's gotten to do/be that was up to him.

I understand that Bulma designed the original get-up, but it was still collaborative; it's not like when Chichi dresses him in what she can afford to buy or make, or when Piccolo dresses him in what he himself likes to wear. And Gohan picked the name. He picked the poses. He picked the voice. He picked the personality. He picked the role.

You know that Oscar Wilde quote that goes something like "give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth"? Yeah. There's madness behind that mask.

It's also a very significant time for him because he's for the first time having the opportunity to associate with peers in a consistent way. And he wants so bad to be "normal" and that's also why the mask is so integral and alluring. And he wants to be a normal bloke and make normal friends, but at the same time, he's out of practice without really realizing it; he hasn't come to terms with how in order to make friends, you have to put yourself out there. He thinks that he can simply make friends while hiding himself and lying about everything. And when Videl starts trying to figure out who he is and pry the mask off, it's a horrifying inconvenience. And Gohan just isn't in the habit of receiving well others' companionship, having lived isolated for so long; when Videl makes him teach her how to fly, he's nice to her, but you can tell that he just wants her to leave.

Her insistence on drilling into him is why they become friends and eventually marry, though.

He seems like an optimistic fellow, and his appreciate for life must be sincere, as his history necessitates it - if life sucked, all of that would have been for nought. But remember, for a good seven years it was just him, his mother, and the new baby. No drama or adventure to bring him out into the world. No friends his age that he could connect and evolve with. Just him up there on Mt Paozu stagnating.

There was definitely a lot of goodness and happiness and stargazing and lovely dinners and hanging out with dinosaurs. But there was also a lot of boredom and avoidance and why-is-the-baby-crying and mom-please-put-the-wooden-spoon-down and mom-please-stop-crying and can-i-have-the-time-to-study-unbothered-please and an undercurrent of feeling bogged down that really isn't apparent until you get out and get moving.

Gohan never says this outloud or thinks this definitively, but it's a natural truth, like the wood that a house is made of - he is going to do everything he can to be a good brother and to protect his baby brother. And it's a given, too, that he'll do everything it takes to keep his mother sane and happy, because everybody else shies away from her, and it's SORT OF Gohan's fault that Goku had died, and he very much wants to give back for all of the nurturing that his mother has given him.

And when you want to be a force of Good that badly, it completely turns you away from the parts of you that may be Bad, and encourages you to be afraid of certain feelings or needs.

When Gohan snaps at people out of irritability or defensiveness, it really seems like he doesn't know that he's doing it, and it comes out in the way that a hurt child may just act out. Everything else that is ugly about him just gets buried deep. And that makes him a weirdo. That's what it seems like anyway

[awhitehead17]

Universal Signs

Chapter 20 / Previous Chapter 

Also on AO3

Enjoy! :D 

Everything is a blur when Tim wakes up the first time. He couldn’t figure out what’s going on around him. There were bright lights blinding him from above, blurry figures coming in and out of his vision and muffled sounds surrounding him, they may be voices but Tim couldn’t understand them.

While most of his senses were overwhelmed, physically he felt awful. His body hurt. Any small movement made his muscles twinge in pain and that made it difficult to focus on anything else.

He tried to push past the pain and attempted to lift an arm, he tried to speak up or even lift his head up, but no part of his body seemed to be cooperating with him no matter how hard he tried. In the end it was easy to give up and to simply lie there, allowing whatever was happening to happen. It’s only accidental that his mind wonders off and he drifts back into unconsciousness.

The second time waking up happened to be much like the first time, not that Tim could recall the previous time and compare them.

The second time things were still unclear but Tim was a little more with it. His vision was still blurred, the lights above irritating his eyes as he tried to blink away the blurriness. Sounds around him were also more intelligible, this time he could tell they were voices however he couldn’t make out what was being said.

The main difference between the two was that Tim hadn’t woken up in as much pain as he did last time. The second time he woke up with his body feeling achier more than anything else. It still happened to be difficult to move his limbs because they felt like lead, but any small movement he made didn’t cause him pain.

Despite all that, he ended up drifting off to sleep again in a matter of minutes.

The third time he woke up he’s certainly more coherent. When he opens his eyes the lights blind him once again but after several blinks his eyes adjust and his sight clears allowing him to see the plain white ceiling far above him.

The next thing Tim does is shift about and test his body. It felt sore and achy. He could at least move his limbs now, as jerky as his movements are he’s pleased to find all of his limbs are still attached and seem to be functioning as they should be.

Tim takes a deep breath and tries to work out what happened that lead him to this point. Different things flash through his mind but he has no idea what’s real and what isn’t. Did he get away from Ra’s in the end? Did Kon and the team come and rescue him? Or is his mind making things up, his subconscious trying to make the shitty situation better by giving him false hope?

Tim does his best to not panic because there’s so much information he’s currently missing. On the other hand, what he knows for certain is that his current location isn’t somewhere he recognises. Perhaps he should be more concerned by this but at this point waking up somewhere new isn’t that much out of the ordinary anymore. Plus everything with his body (except his mind apparently) is working so it can’t mean he’s dead or gravely injured.

Deciding that he needs to try and find out more Tim starts shifting about, trying to get leverage to prop himself up. With struggle he’s able to get himself up onto his elbows and up enough so he could look around at his surroundings.

This is when Tim realises he’s on a bed, lying on some kind of soft mattress with a fluffy pillow underneath his head and a light blanket covering his lower half. He’s dressed in a light white t-shirt and blue cotton trousers.

Moving his attention away from himself Tim glances around the room. It looks like he’s in some kind of hospital. There are multiple beds in front of him against the wall all evenly spaced out. The side he’s on is the exact same. There are a few different machines surrounding his bed and Tim realises that there are a couple different wires and tubes attached to him.

His first instinct upon seeing that is to yank them away but he stops himself from doing so, who knows what they’re doing. They could be keeping him alive for all he knows, if Tim yanks them away he may die within seconds.

Just as he’s about to try and push himself up right even more, voices catch his attention. Tim looks to the right and down where the door to the hospital room is located. The voices grow in volume and soon enough two figures enter the room.

Tim watches them wearily. They’re two females, one of which is green with red hair while the other is fair skinned with blonde hair. Well, he’s assuming they’re females by the look of their figures but he could be wrong. Tim couldn’t put his finger on it but they seem familiar, he’s not sure if he’s met them before or it’s a sense of déjà vu.

The two females cease their conversation when they notice him propped up looking at them. They silently walk over to his bed, both of them taking one side and settling down in a couple chairs there. Tim continues watching them, feeling slightly cautious and anxious, he’s unsure on what they want.

“How are you feeling?” The blonde one asks him, looking him up and down as if inspecting him. Does she have some kind of weird superpowers too?

“Uh…” Tim sounds out, hearing how his voice is croaky Tim clears his throat and winces as he does because of the dryness he feels there. “I’m good thanks.” He tells her in the end.

The blonde hums while the red head stays silent. Tim glances at them and away again, suddenly feeling very awkward. Why did they come here? Where is here exactly? That’s something Tim still hasn’t worked out.

He has no idea on what to say or do to break the thick tension that’s filled the air. After several moments of this, just as it’s about to become too much, the red head finally breaks it.

She’s staring at Tim like she’s looking at a complicated puzzle. Tim really doesn’t appreciate the scrutiny.

“You’re anxious.”

Tim blinks at her, completely caught off guard with the statement. Out of all the things she could have said, that wasn’t even close to what Tim would have imagined being voiced. However it does the trick, it breaks ice and gets him speaking up about the things on his mind from the moment he woke up.

“Yeah I am actually.” He declares profoundly. “Because you want to know why? It’s because I am somewhere I don’t know. I have no idea who you two are or what you want. I can’t remember anything that’s recently happened as my brain is a mess. Am I still with Ra’s? Is this a mind game? Or did I actually get rescued by Kon, Bart and Cassie? The last thing I think I can remember is pain. Probably from being tortured? It all kind of blurs after that. I have absolutely no idea on what to think at this point.”

Tim takes a breath after he finishes rambling. Finding that he’s exerted himself, he flops back down onto the bed and covers his face with his hands, letting out a defeated groan as he does. The two females at his bedside say nothing while he lays there.

“Well we can fill in some gaps for you if you would like us too.”

“You’re safe here. We’re on Krypton now, currently in the infirmary. You were badly wounded.”

Tim removes his hands and glances at them, he has no idea if they’re lying or not. Tim figures the least he could do is listen to them, if they can fill in what he’s missing then that would be a massive relief.

Pushing himself back up onto his elbows he nods. “Can you tell me please? Everything’s a little blurry.”

The red head nods while the blonde stands up and grabs something from the side. It looks like a little remote and after pressing a button on it the bed begins to move. The mattress is rises into an incline position and once it stops moving Tim lets himself relax against it, finding the position more comfortable than before.

“To begin with I’m Kara and that’s M’gann,” the blonde introduces them to him, “we were part of the team that rescued you from the League of Assassins.”

Tim nods his acknowledgement and stays silent. He’s going to assume they know who he is. It also now makes more sense on why they seem familiar. He has met them before, even if he can’t fully remember the experience of doing so.

Kara tells him their side of the story. She summarises how Bart had woken up from his coma, bumped into her and then M’gann. The three of them decided to leave Krypton together in search for Kon and Cassie who had left a note to Bart while he had been unconscious which explained their plan to rescue Tim.

They tracked their location using M’gann’s ship and got onto the League of Assassins base ship, they then bumped into Pru and after a few misunderstandings Pru decided to help them. Pru ended up showing the three of them where Kon and Cassie were being held in a cell because they had been captured. After that Pru went and collected Tim, who had been in terrible shape, and then they all made their way off the base ship in M’gann’s bio ship.

While escaping the assassins Tim had passed out and Pru treated him the best she could on the ship by re-bandaging his wounds. Some time later they made it to Krypton without being caught. Once on the planet Tim had been admitted to the infirmary where his wounds were treated properly.  

“You woke up a few times but were extremely confused with what was going on and then you passed out again. This is the first time you’ve been awake and coherent since we’ve arrived back.” Kara finishes off casually.

Tim blinks at her for a long time, trying to digest everything that she had told him. It’s certainly more than he had been expecting. While her explanation does give him some answers he had been after, it also creates some new ones.

After taking a deep breath he glances at the two beside him. “How long have I been here? In the infirmary I mean.”

Kara and M’gann share a look before turning to him again. “Several days now. Do humans normally sleep so much?” Kara gives him a curious look. It’s an expression he recognises well because the others often wore it when they first met and as they learned more about him.

Before he could respond to the blonde M’gann pipes up. “You were badly wounded and your body was exhausted. The Kryptonian’s treated you the best they could and also used a healing agent to help the accelerate your recovery.”

That would explain why he wasn’t in as much pain as before. His body still hurt of course and is feeling particularly achy but it didn’t feel like it was going to give out at any second.

With that answered he moves onto his next thought. “Where are the others?”

At this question, Tim easily picks up on their reluctance to give him an answer. They share a look before turning back to him but neither of them say anything. Their silence only makes Tim want an answer more and it’s putting him on edge with panic and concern the longer they stay quiet.

“Where are they? They’re okay right?”

“They’re fine!” Kara quickly says watching him with wide eyes. “They’re all fine, it’s just a complicated situation they’re in that’s all. Pru’s fine too.”

Tim frowns, “Complicated? What the hell does that mean?”

“They’re in a lot of trouble Tim. They broke rules, disobeyed orders, kept important information away from the leaders. All three of them are going to be facing some serious consequences because of their actions.”

A sudden wave of guilt hits Tim. The others are all in trouble because of him. They went out of their way to help him, to protect and look after him and because of that they’re in trouble with their leaders.

At the very start while Bart and Kon had easily accepted him onboard, Cassie seemed more reluctant to do so and seemed cold towards him sometimes. Now reflecting on it, perhaps her actions are validated. She probably knew he was trouble from the moment they met but allowed it all to happen anyway. Kon and Bart never seemed too bothered by it.

“Take me to them.” He demands of the girls.

Immediately Kara is shaking her head in denial. “We can’t Tim. They’re currently in the office now with Kal, talking over everything that’s happened.”

He doesn’t know why the urge is so strong but all he can think about is the three aliens that have saved his life numerous of times and how they are now being chewed out for it.

Tim sends Kara a glare. “I don’t care. Look take me yourselves or I’ll find my own way there.” He starts shifting on the mattress, making a move to get up off it when both of girls jump out of their seats with their hands held out to stop him.

“We can’t.”

“You can.”

The three of them have a stare off and despite the hard looks being sent his way, Tim doesn’t back down. He gives them one just as hard back in return. He doesn’t know what does it, but in the end the girls submit and accept that he isn’t changing his mind. They help him out of bed, find him some shoes and start walking him to the main office.

Tim’s mind is rather occupied to take in his surroundings as they walk through various of corridors of a building they’re in. He doesn’t take much notice in the different rooms they pass, or the various of beings they pass by who shoot curious looks his way.

The three of them are silent the whole way there and once they reach some large double doors M’gann says her farewell and leaves him and Kara at the doors. From inside Tim could hear a deep booming voice shouting and he could guess that the angry shouting is being aimed at his friends.

Ignoring Kara’s last attempt to change his mind Tim pushes open the doors without knocking and enters the room. Tim doesn’t know what he had been mentally preparing for when he bursts into the room, the scene that greets him is his friends all sat down on chairs in front of a desk where a large board shouldered man stood behind it.

The unknown man, Tim picks up that he kind of looks like an older version on Kon, is halfway through a sentence and when Tim storms in he abruptly stops talking. Simultaneously his friends all turn around to see what had stopped the man from shouting and then three identical looks of shock and horror cross their faces.

Now he’s entered the room, Tim falters. He’s come in here with no kind of plan on what he’s going to say to try and defend his friends and himself. Maybe Kara had been right after all.

In the end his hesitation at the door doesn’t matter because Kara is right there beside him, her hand wrapping around his arm and starting to tug him back towards the door they had just come through.

“Apologies Kal, I did try to stop him from coming here.” Kara says sincerely with a hint of embarrassment in her tone. “We’ll be on our way.”

“Kara.”

At the call of her name the two of them stop, while the female Kryptonian doesn’t let him go they both turn back around to face the others. The man up front is watching them through narrowed eyes and Tim has no idea on what to think. He really should have thought of something before barging in like this, now he just looks stupid.

“Since the human is awake, it may be worth hearing to what he has to say.” He says in a deep low voice. The tone wasn’t the one he had used when he had been shouting moments ago, this time it’s calm and controlled.

It’s eerily calm and it sets Tim on edge immediately. It reminds him of when Bruce is becomes so angry that he’s scarily calm. Sometimes that calmness is worse than the shouting.

Tim shares a wide-eyed look with Kara who glances between the two of them and then let’s go of his arm. Taking initiative Tim walks further into the room and stands behind his friends, however before he can say anything Kon is jumping up to his feet and protesting.

“Kal this is ridiculous! Tim doesn’t need to get involved, leave him out of this.”

“Sit down Kon-el and not another word.” The command is said in such an aggressive dominating way that there is no way to disobey. For what he thinks is the first time, Tim sees Kon speechless, his friend instantly shuts his mouth and sits back down, but not without glaring.

Once Kon is sat the man’s attention comes back onto Tim. His gaze is heavy and almost feels like it’s penetrating him. Tim does his best to get past the nerves that have built up and face the man head on, he takes a deep breath before saying anything.

“I know as a leader, you’re frustrated at what has transpired recently. They have disrespected you and have disobeyed orders, but by doing so they saved my life. Numerous of times in fact. I am so grateful for what they have done for me from the moment we met.

They didn’t have to help me, they could have easily ignored me and carried on with their jobs but chose not to despite the consequences they would face. They took me on board their ship to look after and help me.

I was taken away from my home without a choice. I never asked for any of this to happen. I have been beaten, tortured, scared, so clueless and completely out of my depth since then. The three in front of you helped to save my life and give me some form of safety.”

Tim swallows and takes a moment to pause to think about what to say next. He’s not entirely sure on how to word what he should, but he means every word that he’s already said.

The man, Kal is it, spoke before he could continue. “One life isn’t worth millions and the threat of war. Not only did they fail to report they found you but they disobeyed orders and ran after you onto the League of Assassins base ship, where they got confronted by Ra’s Al Ghul himself. In the process of that they got others involved, got compromised and then brought back an assassin and two others that were long ago exiled.

You have caused nothing but trouble from the moment you appeared on the radar.”

Tim grits his teeth to stop himself from retaliating at the words. He may not be from around here but this is still clearly an unfair situation.

“Sir, with all due respect, this is a completely unfair situation. Yes they shouldn’t have disobeyed orders, but they were being the good people they are and helping to save a life because they could.

As for the war, I don’t believe that Ra’s endgame. As it’s been pointed out before the alliance between you and the others equal, if not surpass, what the League have. I don’t think you’ll have to worry about a war, Ra’s knows not to attack you head on.”

“That’s a bold statement for you to say.” Kal comments looking at him like he’s now intrigued with Tim. Tim could see anger still there but it’s not as prominent as before, Tim’s going to believe that’s a good thing for now.

“I’m just saying what I believe. From what I can gather Ra’s took me because he happened to be ‘interested’ in me. To begin with I was a slave, being used and beaten, it was like I was an experiment, a new toy they could play with. But things changed and then I practically became a personal assistant for the bastard.

Through luck I managed to escape. That’s what Ra’s is pissed at. A little ole human being able to escape the grasp of the League of Assassin’s. The three in front of you found me on an abandoned planet afterwards and from then got mixed up in all of this which I apologize for.

As for a war, I can’t exactly tell you if he is planning an attack or not. The person you may want to talk to about that is Pru, I’ve heard she’s around. She sacrificed everything to get me, and them, off the base ship. She may be willing to share vital information.

As for me, I just want to go home. I never asked for this.”

Silence fills the room after Tim finishes talking. Everyone is currently staring at him and Tim does his best to not fidget under the attention. He’s not sure if he’s said the right things, all he’s trying to do is clear his name and the others.

Then again they did disobey orders and unfortunately there’s nothing Tim can do to change that fact.

Kal doesn’t stop looking at him. His eyes bore into Tim like he’s trying to see Tim’s memories so he would be able to tell if Tim is telling the truth or not. Wait, can Kryptonian’s see memories or read minds? Tim’s pretty sure Kon didn’t mention those when he told Tim about the abilities that Kryptonian’s have…

Tim’s thoughts are cut off when Kal finally speaks up. His gaze moves around the room before it falls back onto Tim.

“It doesn’t change that they ignored orders and went on an unsanctioned mission which could have easily gone very wrong. The five of them will be punished, some more than others. The other leaders and I need to have a discussion on what the punishments will be and the severity of them.

Moving forward, we will also be keeping a close eye on Ra’s Al Ghul and the League of Assassins after all of this. We need to try and keep updated with his movements.”

For the first time since Tim entered the room, Bart speaks up from his chair. The Speedster is currently vibrating on the spot, it’s like it’s taking all of his restraint to remained seated and to not speed off.

“What does that mean for Tim though? Will he be able to go home?”

Kal finally sits down in the seat behind the desk he’s been standing at. He’s no longer the angry person Tim had walked in on, he’s become more resigned and patient, as if hearing Tim talk has allowed him to let go some of the anger he had been holding on to.

“The human’s – Tim’s – situation will have to be discussed with the other leaders of Krypton and even those across Keystone and Themyscira as all of you have been involved. This impacts more than just Tim and you three and that needs to be taken into consideration.

For now Tim will remain on Krypton until further notice. This will also keep him away from the League for the moment. The rest of you will also remain here until told otherwise and the news of your punishment will come once it has been discussed.”

While that’s not exactly what he had been hoping for, Tim couldn’t really complain. At least the older Kryptonian isn’t kicking him off the planet and leaving him for dead somewhere or worse, handing him back over to the League. As well as him staying on the planet he’ll still be around the others, so there’s that.

“You’ll be contacted when a decision has been made.” Kal continues to talk, looking at the each of them. His gaze lands on Kara for a moment longer before he looks at the rest of them again. “Kara I want to talk to you. The rest of you are dismissed.”

Not finding any other reason to stay they all, besides Kara, exit the office room and pile into the corridor. As soon as the doors close his friends immediately turn to him.

“What was all that about Tim?”

“Why would you do that!”

“I can’t believe you stood up to Kal like that!”

Tim blinks and shakes his head, trying to make sense of the different comments being rapidly fired his way. In the end he’s only able to make out a couple of comments and puts his hands up to try and stop the bombardment that’s happening.

“Guys. Guys! I can’t understand you if you’re all shouting at me!” He sends each of them a glare to shut them up. It does the trick because a moment later they quieten down and look guilty at their outbursts.

Before Tim could say any more, Cassie speaks up again but addresses the whole group instead. “Why don’t we go elsewhere to have this conversation. We’re all still recovering, so let’s get comfortable first.”

At the mention of recovery, Tim’s attention is brought to the achiness thrumming through his body. He’s certainly better than he had previously been, whatever they used to help him recover faster is certainly doing its job however Cassie’s suggestion to rest somewhere is a good one because Tim could feel the weight of his body starting to wear him down.

“Let’s go to my room, it’s the biggest one we have and is private. I doubt we’ll be allowed anywhere near our ship any time soon.” Kon says looking at them all. His gaze lingers on Tim slightly longer than the rest but be turns away without a comment.

The four of the make their way to Kon’s room in silence. Tim trails behind them, moving a little slower because of his recovery and because he doesn’t have their super stamina or whatever it is.

They pass through many corridors and many rooms on the way there. If Tim had been feeling more alert he would have definitely taken an interest in what they’re passing by, but at that moment he simply didn’t have enough energy to care. He just wants to sit down, get this conversation looming over their heads out of the way and go to sleep.

When Kon finally stops at a door, Tim is relieved to find that they’ve arrived at the Kryptonian’s room. Kon allows them inside and follows in behind them. It’s a simple square room which holds the basic necessities, a bed tucked into a corner, some draws, a desk, a chair and a wardrobe. There’s a small window in the middle of the wall above the bed which is allowing light to stream into the room.

Without prompting, Tim makes his way over to the bed and collapses on it. A moment later he forces himself to move into a sitting position and leans again the wall as the others settle around him. Bart takes the desk chair and immediately starts spinning in circles on it, Cassie sits beside him on the bed and leans against the headboard while Kon stays standing and rests against the wardrobe facing them.

“So first off, how are you Tim? How are you feeling?” Cassie asks looking him over.

In response Tim shrugs. “Okay as can be I guess. I ache all over but I am much better than before. M’gann and Kara described to me what happened on the ship when you all came to get me. My mind is a little blurry from that.”

Kon makes a snorting like sound. “You were out of it alright. I don’t think we’ve ever actually seen you look that bad. You were also completely out of it when we arrived on Krypton. Every time the medics tried to help you, you kept swatting them away and complaining until you fell unconscious again.”

Tim doesn’t know what to say to that so he opts for staying silent, though he’s mentally thanking god that he can’t remember it because it sounds too embarrassing.

“Why did you all come after me on the ship? Not that I don’t appreciate it because I really, really, do but if it was going to get you into this much trouble then why do it?” Tim asks them openly.

They don’t owe him anything so why would they all disobey orders like they have and risk their lives in an attempt to save his? He wasn’t worth the trouble.

His question gets three identical pointed looks sent his way. Tim raises an eyebrow at them, clearly missing the reason why they were all looking at him like that.

Bart stops spinning on the chair and turns his body so he’s facing Tim straight on. “Are you being serious? Is that some kind of human joke we don’t know about? We know you have a sense of humour Tim but I don’t know if that counts as being humorous.”

Tim opens his mouth to protest but Kon speaks up before he could, he sounds peeved as he talks. “Tim, you’re part of our crew no matter what. We all consider you one of us. It doesn’t matter how you joined us or how we met or what your background is. Of course we were coming after you.”

This time when Tim goes to protest he’s interrupted by Cassie. “Tim, let me ask you this. Why did you come to the office when we were in there?”

That makes him pause. He glances at the Amazon to find her watching him with a contemplated look as she waits for an answer. Tim looks away and focuses on his hands in lap as he thinks it through.

“I don’t know… I just – I felt guilty because you lot were being chewed out for saving me which seems unfair from my perspective and none of you deserve it. To be fair it was a rather spontaneous choice, one of which Kara protested against but I refused to listen.”

“Why did you feel guilty? Our choices were our own, you had no say in them.”

“Because you’ve all helped me in ways I can never repay and you’re paying the price of doing so. If I hadn’t been around you all wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“You came to the office to say your piece, to be on our side and defend us. While it wasn��t necessary because the leaders are all pompous and have already decided our punishments and nothing will change that, you still went and did it because you care. You care about us as we do you.

You came to the office because we were there, just like the way we went to the base ship because that’s where you were. We did it because we wanted too.”

Tim blinks at his hands as he thinks it through. He knows deep down that Cassie has hit the nail on the head but he’s reluctant to admit it. He lets out a soft amused snort, “Well I think invading a ship full of assassins is rather different to barging into an office.”

That comment gets him several grins.

“The reason behind both actions are the same are they not? Despite how different the scenarios are they have the same meaning.” Kon says looking at him.

Knowing that there’s not much else to say, unless he wants them to go around in circles again, Tim simply nods. “Thank you. I really mean when I say I’m grateful for everything you all have done.”

“You’ve certainly made our job a lot more interesting!” Bart laughs as he once again starts spinning on the chair. “If anything we probably owe you an apology, after all you got taken when we were supposed to be protecting you.”

At that Tim frowns and shakes his head. “No. I don’t blame you for that. It’s just an unfortunate  occurrence. Yeah I could have done without the torture but I don’t blame you guys for that.”

Cassie sends him a deadpan expression. “An ‘unfortunate occurrence’? You’re labelling yourself getting kidnapped and tortured as an ‘unfortunate occurrence’. That’s not right. Is it just an ‘unfortunate occurrence’ the first time you were taken too?”

Tim winces when she says that. “Maybe that came out wrong but I stand by what I said. I don’t blame none of you for it happening.”

This gets him a bunch of eye rolls though thankfully they drop it at that. Once again, it happens to be a conversation which they could easily go around in circles with. After that a silence settles over them while they each get lost in their thoughts.

Tim’s thinking about how hopefully this is the start of the end. After the leaders have discussed whatever they need to about whatever it is, hopefully they’ll allow him to go home. When he goes home who know what will happen. What’s the chance that Ra’s will find him again? What if something follows him back to Earth? Will his family still be there? Will they believe it’s him when he returns? How long has it been since he disappeared? What will life be like now he knows what exists in the universe?

All these questions he can think of and every one of them all have unpredictable answers. Tim has no idea what’s around the corner and has to wait to find out what will happen.

“I’ve been thinking why doesn’t Tim get some more sleep, while the rest of us make ourselves useful somewhere. Sitting here isn’t achieving anything.”

Cassie’s comment breaks Tim out of his thoughts and he finds himself unable to refuse that idea. Some more sleep does sound pretty good. Plus if he’s asleep at least he’s not actively thinking.

“Yeah okay. That sounds like a plan.” Kon easily agrees. Bart hums his agreement and jumps up from the chair he’s on.

Tim glances at Kon. “You don’t mind me taking your bed?”

Kon waves his hand nonchalantly. “Well I’m not using it so go ahead. Plus you look like you need the rest. It’s still so weird about how much sleep you humans need.”

Tim rolls his eyes but isn’t annoyed at the comment. He too sometimes thinks that himself. As Cassie gets up from the bed, Tim takes her spot and gets comfortable. The others all leave the room, claiming they’ll be back in a bit to check on him. By the time the door shuts Tim is out like a light.

[docfuture]

Princess, part 9

     [This story is a prequel, set several years before The Fall of Doc Future, when Flicker is 16.  Links to some of my other work are here.  Updates were theoretically biweekly–more realistically, I’m going to try to get the next one out by early June.]

Previous: Part 8

     Senses were funny things.  You could use them without having any idea how they worked, or even that you had them.  Ask most people how many senses there were and they would tell you 'five.'  Then ask about balance and you might get a frown, a thoughtful look, or a rationalization, depending on the person.       Even after Flicker had acquired Database access, it had taken her quite a while to realize that there were senses she had that humans didn't have, or didn't use quite the same way.  When she did, she'd talked to Sealord, who most people thought of as the 'ruler' of the Deep Kingdoms--the truth was way messier, but Sealord was resigned to the human preference for simple fictions over complicated facts.  He was a giant squid who could shapeshift into human form for communication and diplomatic purposes, and he'd been willing to indulge Flicker's curiosity with several long conversations about sensory differences.  That had helped her appreciate how profoundly senses affected thinking, and how some things she found strange about normal humans were natural consequences of having different senses.       Flicker had a mass sense.  Most humans didn't.  They had to estimate it by sight, touch, or experience.  That felt weird to her.  Doc had confirmed that the only reason humans didn't injure themselves as a result even more often than they did was a significant amount of effort put into engineering their environment around the problem.       She didn't actively use it much while stationary.  The resolution wasn't great except near her fingertips, and even then, sight was better if the light was adequate.  Mass sense didn't connect to her mind the same way vision did, so it was laborious to use it to read carved letters or braille.  Intervening mass made it a little fuzzier, but it still let her tell if someone was right on the other side of a door that might need to suddenly disappear, or find a breaker panel even if some idiot had covered it.  It really came into its own when she was moving--the faster the better.  It was at the core of her reflexes for maneuvering and collision avoidance.  It worked in the dark, couldn't be blocked, and always let her know which way was down.       It also let her sense things that were quite far away, if they were massive enough.  Like the Sun.       And the Moon.       That made it better than sight right now.  On flat ground or water when she was running around on Earth, her velocity vector was necessarily tangent to Earth's surface.  If she wanted it to be pointing at the Moon when she jumped, that meant the Moon had to be on the horizon.  Except it looked like it was above it to eyes, because air bent light.  Her visor could compensate, but she didn't need it.  She could see the Moon's mass.       She was at the right place, at the right velocity.  It was the right time.  She jumped.       Down.       Jumping up wasn't safe.  That was a bone-deep reflex for Flicker, ingrained for longer than she could remember.  The only safe direction to jump was towards a large mass.  If she got out of momentum transfer range of the ground--about 50 meters--it was scary enough.  She had practiced that by jumping back and forth between canyon walls, and the vastly decreased ability to change her vector had been frightening and disturbing, but endurable.  Up, at high velocity, was not.       But down...  Down worked.       Flicker jumped down toward the surface of the Moon at five percent of the speed of light, trailing plasma as she left Earth's atmosphere behind.       *****       Yesterday.       Doc leaned back in the chair at his workstation and took a sip of coffee.       "Still a lot of failure modes," he said.  "Some because of the number of variables we have to extrapolate rather than interpolate.  And more from mechanics we don't even know about yet.  But if that wasn't true, you wouldn't need Speedtest.  All your support will be ready for tomorrow."       "Do you think I should wait longer?" asked Flicker.       "That's a decision no one but you can make.  You've done all your preparation and backups.  The Database says your judgement is within appropriate limits.  If you think you should wait, then wait.  I won't argue.  But no, I don't think it would necessarily help.  Your disinclination to delay further is reasonable.  The world doesn't stand still--waiting for a perfect time can be a trap.  Speedtest was always going to be risky."       "You don't think Journeyman's Diviner data was relevant?"       "I wouldn't go that far.  I have been taking precautions in case someone's been waiting until you're gone to try triggering a nuclear war or something similarly idiotic."       "Oh.  Any further news from him?"       "Last word was that he had been unable to contact anyone else helpful," said Doc.  "Which is understandable.  Trying to use divination to control a global level timing decision might be causally unstable--and a positive feedback loop in either back-propagation or future causal reinforcement could get quite nasty for them."       "What's your estimate for success chances?" she asked.  "DASI won't give me anything quantitative.  Says it's an overinterpretation hazard."       "Then I'm afraid you won't find mine very useful," said Doc. "It's too dependent on judgements you'll be making on the spot, after you have more data.  So I'm not willing to commit to numbers either."       A deep breath.  "How about something qualitative?"       "Very well.  I think you're almost certain to arrive at the Moon physically able to collect data, quite likely to make it back to Earth still mobile, reasonably favored to return technically alive, and have a decent chance at avoiding serious injury.  All return possibilities drop to near zero if you get an abort call from Breakpoint and don't listen."       "Technically alive means I don't have to try a mass template restore to survive?"       "Or need isotope exchange to avoid the death of your physical body from extreme radioactivity or an unlivable isotope balance.  Your powers do not appear to confer complete immunity to nucleosynthesis.  That's why I beefed up the force fields on the rad-hardened regen tank and moved it next to the exchanger and the cooling channels for the isotope burner.  I don't think it's the most likely scenario--but it is one that can be ameliorated by proper preparation.  Possibly.  It still wouldn't be pleasant."       Flicker snorted.  "Well, duh.  We planned it out to find the unpleasant surprises while we're ready.  How about data?"       "The Volunteer already dropped off the sensors and repeaters, and you have a robust set of communication backups for interim reports and emergencies.  Get back reasonably intact and you can update details in person."       She looked at him.  He wouldn't say 'Be careful'.  But he knew how she felt about the data.  That was pure Doc.  That was... okay.       Flicker smiled.  "All right," she said.       *****       Now.       Fear was normally an emotion Flicker could remove to a distance by speeding up her mind--it was a thing of chemistry or memory.       Not her problem with heights, though.  That was her speed mind subconscious letting her know, in no uncertain terms, that Something was Wrong.  She was ready for it.       She was less ready for the cascade of alarms and less identifiable information from speed mind and body that started piling up as soon as she left most of the atmosphere behind.  They roughly mapped to itchiness, tingling, and discomfort in places she hadn't even known she had, and whose topology and even dimensionality was not immediately obvious.  But she was in an environment she'd never experienced before--a vacuum, far from mass, with significant velocity toward her destination--so she'd expected something new.       She sped her mind up more to catalog everything and record her impressions for the Database.  That beat anxious waiting during what would otherwise be a subjectively interminable coast phase of her journey to the Moon.  She also tried to interpret what she could.       One existing alert that was usually omnipresent whenever she moved had gone silent--okay, that was hazardous mass flow, since she was now moving through vacuum.  Never mind that several other alarms were complaining about said vacuum--not that it was a vacuum, but that it was the wrong kind.  The constant01 was too low, constant02 was too high, several somewhat less important constants were nevertheless far outside tolerances, and many things wanted recalibration.       And there was a nagging feeling:  Her untranslated01 was locked down by override, so constant03 was too high--a potential hazard; did she want to start the override reset process so she could restore constant03 to default?  A least within--okay, same range as her momentum transfer, so--50 meters?       Puzzle her way through the correspondences.  Constant03 matched the scale factor for the electromagnetic quantum.       She wasn't sure what her untranslated01 was, but it wanted to turn itself on and change Planck's constant to some unknown default, everywhere within 50 meters.       Nooooo, I don't think so.       A bit of fear was back.  Flicker noted a few things that might become relevant to her tests, then started carefully putting up mental hazard tape around new internal regions of Don't Want to Mess With That.       *****       Closing in on the Moon, finally.  Flicker's visor told her she was approaching at about 15,000 kilometers per second, or 0.05c.  But she didn't really need it as long as she was going reasonably fast.  As part of her mass sense, she could tell her velocity relative to any massive frame of reference.  And the sense was much sharper when she wasn't damping and compensating for a constant bombardment of passing air.       Her velocity was fine--direction was nearly straight down towards a spot close to the center of the visible disc of the Moon.  And her inertial damping and momentum transfer also felt crisper.  Could she get a frame lock before she landed?  Time to find out.       Feet first, arms extended above her head, feeling for that welcome mass.  100 meters.       3 more microseconds.  55 meters.       Approaching 50...  Frame lock!  Hello Moon!       Decelerate.  Ten billion g's straight, with a frame locked momentum dump on top.  It hit the moon like a tiny pulse of gravitational waves.       Slower, slower, nanoseconds rushing by.  Under 100 km/s.  Toes touched, still decelerating.       Flex the knees, swing her arms down, and... stationary!  Distance 0, velocity 0.       She stood.  Damn, solid ground felt good.  And she'd managed it without any plasma or explosions--just a spray of dust as the lunar surface rebounded from the momentum transfer.  She sent a landing summary com dump to the nearest repeater, and received prerecorded congratulations from DASI in return.  She tilted her head back and looked up at the Earth.       "Hey Doc," she sent.  "No crash.  No crater.  No fireball.  No problem.  The Flicker has landed."       She didn't wait for a reply before she started accelerating.  That would take more than 2 seconds, and she had work to do.  Data to gather.       *****       Setup.  Move.  Test.  Send data and analyze.  Flicker fell into a pleasant rhythm.  The lack of atmosphere made everything crisper--it was easier to distinguish more distant details with her mass sense when there wasn't air in the way.  The solid frame lock was a joy; the absence of things like buried cables, basements, sewers, and other man-made voids meant a more assured connection to the ground, and the lack of life and air meant she didn't have to juggle side effects.  This let her change direction far more easily if she didn't also change speed--sharing momentum with an intangible 'Moon hug' allowed her to dissipate less energy staying on the surface, even though it was smaller than the Earth and she was moving faster.       A lot faster.       And she confirmed something interesting about her mass sense.  The velocity part was not a side effect.  She wasn't sensing mass so much as spacetime curvature, including all the changes caused by her velocity.  She could use relativity to see.  It showed her an odd universe--but it didn't get any more odd when she sped up, and all her regular senses did.  It let her aim--without using her visor--at something she was approaching obliquely at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and still hit it with a tossed object.  (A tiny one--she didn't want to cause too big a fireball.)       And the speed measure she sensed wasn't a thing of distance over time, or even a direct comparison to light.  It was a scale factor--a number--and a very practical one.  Gamma.       What was gamma?  Gamma was the most useful thing to know about your speed when you were going real fast.  When relativity wasn't just noticeable, but dominant.       Most popular explanations of special relativity described strange effects that became apparent when you were traveling close to the speed of light.  Distances got shorter, time slowed down, masses increased.  But how much shorter?  Gamma.  How much slower?  Gamma.  Increased by what factor?  Gamma.       How did you find it?  Well, if you knew the velocity of an object you could calculate it: It was 1 over the square root of 1 minus v squared over c squared.  But Flicker didn't need to calculate it.  She could feel it.       A whole bunch of physics equations had a simple form that was really a low speed approximation, and more complicated accurate form for fast things that used gamma.  Or the Lorentz factor, if you were being formal or talking to radiation people who were twitchy about high energy photons of the same name.  Standing still was gamma 1, and it went up from there.  All the way up, because it made something very clear about the speed of light.  No matter how close you got to it, you were still infinitely far away, because the speed of light was infinite gamma.       Another thing it made clear was how relatively slow she had to go on Earth.       Her jump to the Moon had been at 0.05c, which corresponded to a gamma of 1.00125 or so.       Her normal Earth speed limit was 0.2c--gamma 1.021.       She moved between tests at 0.8c--gamma 1.667, and the effects were quite noticeable.  The whole Moon was flattened--but only in the direction she was traveling.  Every object was flattened or stretched, and the light coming from them made them look twisted.  For the trial run for the final speed test she'd gone up to 0.96c--gamma 3.571. That turned the Moon into a modestly thick disc, with her constantly cresting the edge.  And pushing down hard to stay on the surface.  How hard scaled with both velocity squared and gamma squared.  The frame lock let her do it, but 60 billion g's down was still a lot.  Sensors and her visor had started picking up some unusual effects, so Doc and the Database were analyzing them back on Earth while she finished up everything else.       One thing that had turned out to be a bigger problem than expected was dust.  Not regular surface dust, which Flicker was careful not to disturb unnecessarily, but the tiniest particles from the interplanetary dust cloud, sifting down to the surface of the Moon unhindered by air.  They weren't collectively anywhere near as dense as air, but they were too small to avoid, too common to ignore, just fast enough to replenish cleared paths, and too isolated and erratic to deflect with her usual flow and plasma tricks.  Her inertial damping kept them from causing much direct damage, but her space modified costume was rapidly becoming radioactive, and they had the potential to cause other problems.       She finished the last of the extended tests, then slowed down to breathe.  She was running low on oxygen, so she topped off her small, hardened supply from the tank in the preplaced stash.  She could go without breathing for quite a while if she had to, but it wasn't fun.  The tank and its backup were in somewhat less radiation and shock tolerant containers, and that looked like it might become a problem.  She sent off her preliminary test assessment to Earth, then browsed Database inferences while she waited for Doc's reply.       "I concur with the plasma-cleared torus for the final run," said Doc.  "It will stay dust-free for long enough.  Go as fast as you feel safe.  I won't be able to talk to you, but I'll be monitoring.  Don't worry about anything else.  Good luck, and see you soon."       Flicker smiled.  At last.  The Speedtest grand finale.       How fast dare I go, with nothing in the way?  I shall run and find out.       She felt as free as she'd ever been.       *****       First great circle circuit, deliberately kicking up Moon dust at gamma 3.5. Done in 38 milliseconds for the Moon, 11 for her.       Second circuit, turning the dust into a continuous plasma tunnel blasting outward to repel or vaporize anything new that might wander into her way.       Back around to begin the third circuit.       And deep inside her mind, she decided something else.  There were no intelligent beings closer to her than Earth, over a light second away.  There was no one else who could think inside her light cone, and wouldn't be, for over a second, unless something very strange--and very damning--happened.  She had projectiles ready, just in case.  But she didn't think anything would.       Because she wasn't just testing, she was hunting.       "That's a decision no one but you can make," Doc had said.  With more implications than were obvious.  She could go for a safer final test--or push to the limit.  And no one, no one, could know in advance.  She took counsel of the plasma noise, random fluctuations.  Unique to this worldline and unpredictable.       And made her choice.       She did not forget the thin threads that connected her to humanity, even while she was out here, far enough away that no one else would get hurt.  She remembered silly bits and pieces of life, collected haphazardly like precious mementos, that made her as human as she could be.           Vacuum calls to me           Many universes sing           I dance in this one       She started accelerating.       *****       Gamma 20, circling the Moon.  A circuit would take just 2 milliseconds for her--if she stopped accelerating, which she didn't.  Just under 37 milliseconds for the Moon.  That wasn't going to change change much anymore, she was already over 0.99c.  She had fully clamped down on her body with her power, preserving every nucleus in every atom of her body in its relative local position, regardless of now-forbidden chemistry.  The electrons were still free to move, and did, streaming outwards, carrying entropy that now had few other ways to escape.  New electrons kept arriving, pulled by her increasing positive charge, but they were expelled in turn.       She moved in a very strange realm, twisted and Doppler shifted, full of increasingly furious radiation from solar wind and residual plasma particles encountered at massive speed.  But they were essentially standing still.  The speed was all hers.  They were just in the way.       *****       She was hunting a probability manipulator, possibly an Oracle, certainly one that had access to visions of the future--and one who wished her ill.  Whoever had sent Hermes, so carefully timed to hit her at a weak point.  And possibly given her an extra push to sabotage her relationship with Journeyman.  But they had done nothing traceable.  Yet.  She was giving them an opportunity to change that.  A very tempting one.       *****       Gamma 70.  Almost 0.9999c.  Tiny second order effects were becoming large, and previously unnoticed third order ones were becoming noticeable.  The frame-locked centripetal acceleration downward, keeping her near the surface as she speed skated over the Moon, had become massive, and those tiny effects were generating heat.  She was entropy dumping it into the lunar surface at a significant rate now.       *****       How much could an Oracle see?  They weren't perfect; they couldn't be.  And how fast could they see a new future, if it changed?  Doc's time loop theories set limits on that.  So many theories, which ones were right?  Who could know?  But there were predictions in common.  And there was something special about the fifty ciruit limit for the final run of Speedtest.  It would extend over an interval long enough for light--and causality--to get from Earth to the Moon.  Barely.  But not long enough for a round trip.       So an Oracle might see a beginning of Speedtest from Earth, and the right time and place and worldline to send a probability manipulation pulse to affect the end.  Or they could see an end, and the time and place to join that Earth.  But not both.       *****       Gamma 707.  0.999999c.  Near full ionization--the electrons couldn't keep up as she pulled them from the ground and the surrounding plasma.  Her body sent a banshee wail of synchrotron radiation outward as she pulled down at trillions of g's to stay on the Moon.  Her visor had died; nothing electronic could hope to survive the flux she was sending out now.  But it wouldn't be much longer.       *****       She hadn't told Journeyman.  She hadn't told Doc.  She hadn't told DASI.  She'd made her choice in a small part of her high speed mind intended for diagnostics.  It was the right size for a human-like mind, if not remotely human shaped.  It was enough.  She'd set her trap.  She was the trap.  Her would-be nemesis could take what looked like their best shot, localizing themselves to a particular Earth worldline--but not if they wanted to see how it all turned out.       Flicker bared her teeth.       *****       Gamma 2886.  0.99999994c.  A complete circuit would take less than 13 microseconds subjective because of time dilation.  An outside observer would measure her mass at 144 metric tons.  Over 10^22 Joules of kinetic energy, more than 3,000 gigatons of TNT.  She was still moving stably, but the side effects were just becoming too much.  Flicker stopped accelerating, holding her speed steady as she approached the far side of the Moon before her planned deceleration.  She hadn't quite managed the full fifty circuits, but she didn't want to tear the Moon apart, and the strip of ground under her had already absorbed a massive amount of energy from her entropy dumping.  She had her data--it was time to slow down.  Too bad.  Her trap didn't seem to have--       Her entropy dumping weakened, then stopped completely.  Internal alarms blared and she started heating up.  Quickly.       There it was.  Got you, you bastard.       Now to stay alive.  First, get around to the far side before her temperature rose too--       Her frame lock started to waver, releasing a blast of energy when she compensated.       Shit.  Hang on.  Earth should not have line of sight to what was about to happen.       Let go of non-essentials.  Dump them--she could still connect to everything inside her 10 centimeter inertial damping range.  Costume, hood, remaining projectiles, now-useless visor, hair.  Blast them away at 50 million K.  Up and forward.  Push out energy and momentum.  That got her over the horizon.       The frame lock broke.  Facing almost directly away from Earth.  Yeah, that was how the bastard had planned to get rid of her--off into interstellar space at relativistic speed with no hope of survival, let alone return.       Her regular acceleration limit was 10 billion g's.  She needed way more to stay near the Moon at this speed, and had no time to slow down.  But there was a way.       Curve around, heating up.  Torrents of particles inside her, pair production from pushing too hard.  Heat.  Pain.  Alarms.  She altered her path slightly.  Dust was the least of her worries.  But one last push, and she could slow down enough to stay near the surface.  The oldest way.       Lithobraking.       This is going to hurt.       Flicker, still moving at a gamma of over 2700, ran head on into a mountain at the edge of the South Pole--Aitken basin.       Discontinuity.       *****       Shattering fragments of intruding nucleons.  Neutrinos.  Angry photons, disintegrating every nucleus that wasn't hers.  More neutrinos.  Sprays of high-mass, short-lived hadrons.  Even more neutrinos.  Energy and entropy with nowhere to go pulling quarks from the vacuum.       Heat and pain.  Alarms screaming, distantly.  Was she below the Hagedorn temperature yet?       Enough.  Radiate ALL the neutrinos.  They could get out without running into anything, unlike everything else.       Keep curving around, the Moon was still there.  At least ahead of her.  What was behind her was less important.  Push entropy into a smaller and smaller region inside.  Concentrate the heat.  Keep pumping out neutrinos.       Until Flicker finally cooled, and slowed to a crawl.  Still intact.       Well, relatively cool.  Under a billion kelvins.  And a relative crawl, gamma 3 or so.       And relatively... wait.  Why was she more massive?  Her nuclei were still there--at least the same elements, she had that locked in.       Was it foreign matter in her lungs and gastrointestinal tract?  No... Some nucleons had started fusing again after photodisintegration, run through the CNO cycle, and the resulting helium was now merrily alpha-processing its way up the curve of binding energy.  Reassuringly normal physics, if not the sort she generally wanted inside her body. But it was very low density.  Not enough to explain--       Oh.  "Your powers do not appear to confer complete immunity to nucleosynthesis."  That weird feeling and extra mass was a vast excess of r-process heavy isotopes left from neutron bombardment by the fragments of the mountain she'd run through.       She was...  Gods and monsters she was a mess.  Excessively radioactive, and going to stay that way until the millisecond isotopes decayed.  Technically alive didn't look like it was happening soon, even after electrons came back.  Time to try for 'back to Earth still mobile'.       No way to dump heat but radiation, so she radiated as she pushed down to stay on the last arc of her great circle curve.  She sensed the Earth clearly, the welcome mass of home.  Finally, it rose above the horizon and she could let go.  Jump back down to Earth.       Goodbye, Moon.  It was nice meeting you.  Sorry about the mess.       *****       Flicker spared a microsecond for a hunt assessment as she plummeted back towards Earth, radiating copiously.  Things didn't look good for fast pursuit of whoever had hit her with the attack.  Most of her normal senses were down--her flesh body had turned into a strangely rigid plasma, a bare framework for what might eventually be something humanlike again.  Her com options were down to glorified handwaving and signal cannons, and even if she could get triangulation data quickly after getting back to Earth, the list of things wrong catalogued by her speed mind was more than a human mind could comprehend.  It was hard to set up alarm flood handling for body parts you didn't know you had, and those early itchy complaints about lack of calibration had had a point.  At least some of the alerts seemed to be consequences of self-repair.  They kept her mind off damage, and pain.  Silver linings...       Her untranslated01 was being passive-aggressive about altering Plank's constant again, with damage mitigation suggestions implying that if she was insistent on using neutrino cooling in such an (untranslated) (untranslated) environment, it would help.  Or maybe she was just projecting; she would be snarky in the kind of alarms you generally only saw after ignoring many 'No! Stop! Unsafe!' ones.       Sorry, still no messing with Plank's constant.       Flicker was going to have enough trouble drag braking by momentum transfer in the upper atmosphere.  Even if she just used it to buffer her inherent deceleration, it would be unstable for induced torque, and she would have to add energy to keep from spinning violently.  How much?  She didn't know; she hadn't planned on coming home quite this fast.  And she really wanted to limit her energy dissipation to kilotons instead of megatons.  She was going to reenter over the Pacific, but pulling a super-Tunguska on the way down would be obnoxious.       ...and the atmosphere was coming up quick, she could feel the flux increasing and oh, what a great time for her vertigo to come back.  Because her eyes weren't working, she was using mass sense to see and flux rates to maneuver and that didn't help with dizzyness.       Drag, trying to stabilize on the thin upper atmospehere, working as well as she'd expected:  Badly.       Torque.  Starting to spin.  Shit.  Counter it.  Shitshit too much.  Tumbling on a different axis.  Slow it.  Okay.       Plasma everywhere, had she dumped enough?  Gamma 1.12, not yet.  But the air was thick enough now she could start using her old inertial damping flow tricks, as long as she didn't care how much she heated up, so she stopped trying to fight it, just smoothed it out, let her momentum drop the old fashioned way.       Okay, it looked like it was going to be megatons after all, but spread out, and hopefully not too many...       Lower atmosphere, and surface of the ocean coming up.  Whoops, mass flow went up, what?  Ah, water, she was coming in through a thunderstorm, not ideal, but--wait, scratch that, she was insanely radioactive in Earth terms and she was about to hit salt water, fresh water was better to slow down...       Down to about 0.07c, and she didn't manage to frame lock until she was within 40 meters, bad timing with waves, but she could entropy dump again!  Relief!  She could finally--okay that was a lot of heat, she'd caused some fusion coming in, but it was just thermal X-rays, mostly, and...       This landing did cause a fireball.  But she'd made it back.  Now she needed to readjust her perspective to Earth-appropriate energy levels and start moving, because she was still radiating, a lot of it was neutrons, and the shock wave from her landing might--       Oh crap, what's that?  Density voids beneath the surface within a few kilometers, going to get hit by her impact shockwave.  What was... Whales.  She was seeing the air inside the lungs of whales with her density sense.  Were they far enough away to survive?  Maybe.  Anything else?       What was that, up in the sky?       Something human-sized, coming in at just over orbital speed--wait, she'd know that shockwave anywhere, no one else flew like that, it had to be the Volunteer.       Flicker sped over to just in front of him and slowed down enough for him to see--millisecond timescales, but how to talk?  She couldn't see, and her com was ancient history.       He could see.  And she could write.  Plasma letters in the air over the ocean.  She didn't need his help, but others did.       Shockwave.  Can't stay.  Save the whales.       He could get details from Doc, and it was time for her to go.  She dared not remain stationary for more than a few milliseconds yet--she was entropy dumping just to get down to solar surface temperatures, neutron activation was a thing, she needed some radiation time before it would be safe to head for Doc's, and salt water was not the best place for it.       South.  0.05c.  Her flow compensation in air was still shaky, not up to her usual standards, and she'd scattered plenty of high energy plasma around already.       *****       Antarctica.  Ross ice shelf.  Nothing but fresh water and dry air.  A good place to cool down, and as good as she was going to get to radiate neutrons.  Slow loops, down at a thousand kilometers per second, slow enough to be ghosting--if she hadn't been glowing hot.       Her path was predictable, and she finally heard a signal--an orbital pulse maser from Doc, sending coded bits she could feel directly.  Low bandwidth, noisy, but 'Threat gone'?  Had her attacker escaped already?       Anger kindled.  But she wasn't thinking clearly beyond immediate needs, too many things were still wrong--store the anger, there were places for it, places that wouldn't get completely cleared when she could finally sleep again.  She would remember, regardless.       Seconds stretched out.  But fresh water could absorb neutrons with very little persistent radiation, and her nuclei were settling down a bit--excited isomers and excess neutrons were making their way out, electrons were returning long enough to start accumulating, and her radiation profile was slowly dropping to the point where she might be able to actually stop somewhere with appropriate cooling.       More pulses.  'Pumps on.  Shields up.  Isotope exchanger ready.'       Doc was prepared.  And she needed that exchanger.  She was still clamped down hard, and had to stay that way, because she had too many nuclei that were too neutron heavy to be stable--and letting them decay would change them to different elements, and, say, carbon changing to nitrogen inside her DNA would be A Problem when she let the chemistry in her body restart.  To say nothing of all the tritium.  She needed time in the shop before she could even consider restarting biology and life.       A long time.  Hours, possibly days.  Not pleasant, not optional.       And she'd cooled and radiated enough.  Equilibrium decay temperature was manageable.  Time to head home.       *****       Back at Doc's, inside the force fields that protected everything else from her.  The pumps did their work bringing fresh water in range for entropy dumping, so she could cool without moving.  Isotope exchange started, hands and eyes first, so she could see and type for the rest.       She still had many questions.  But she'd survived Speedtest, discovered so much, run up to gamma 2886, 0.99999994c, weathered the attack, and made it home.  Soon she would be able to start recording data again, and ask some of those questions.  Her attacker appeared to have escaped.  But they had been triangulated, from the timing of the attack on the Moon along with signals extracted from the Omniresonators at the Database nodes.  There was a distinctive signature--and the attacker had fled, immediately, to another dimension, without waiting to see if their attack succeeded.  They feared her survival.       Flicker lived.  And she would not forget.

Next:  Part 10

[liskantope]

Back during my early days on Tumblr, around the time I started here actually, I started reading Questionable Content comics from the beginning, 10 per day, to catch up to the current ones (at the time the comics numbered just over 3000). The day I finished the first 1000 I blogged about it, and then after the 2000th and 3000th I reblogged to update my review. The final reblog, from December 15th, 2015, is here.

The 4000th QC comic came out on Friday, and I’ve decided that in keeping with tradition it’s time to write a review of the past 1000 (although I’m doing it in a fresh post and not reblogging because apparently back in 2015 I hadn’t discovered readmore links yet and the post would look annoyingly long). So let’s get right to it... under the readmore link which I now know is a thing.

This past thousand comics, more than the previous runs of 1000, happens to converge upon a few prominent themes and one very prominent new character: Bubbles. As Bubbles is introduced soon after comic #3000 and is then heavily developed through the next thousand comics, with many of the story arcs (including the longest one ever seen in QC) centering on her, I might call the period of this past thousand comics The Year of Bubbles or something like that if in fact it were only a year instead of almost four (The 200-Week-Period of Bubbles doesn’t roll off the keyboard quite as nicely).

More generally, this webcomic has taken the AI theme to a whole new level in the past thousand comics with Bubbles’ introduction and development only the most major component of this -- whereas the presence of AI was a very minor and almost awkward side-issue in the early days of QC, the comic has now gone full-on robot-themed. I’d estimate that something in the ballpark of one third of the content in the #3000′s was focused on robots’ interactions and relationships with each other -- I think for the first time one could say it passed the AI-rights analog of the Bechdel test. Some 1000 comics ago I remember being mildly impatient at how robot-themed the content was getting, perhaps out of a vague feeling that the human characters were the ones I identified with the most (perhaps in the QC universe, and possibly the real world before the end of my lifetime, this would be considered a semi-subconscious form of bigotry which I can’t call “human-ism” but would deserve some term). I particularly remember not being enthralled with Bubbles when she was first introduced and was slightly irritated that she was immediately taking center stage.

But Bubbles, as well as the story arcs involving AIs in general, grew on me a lot, not just as an allegory of real-life social justice issues but as stories which provoke ideas and questions that I find interesting in their own right. In the case of the comics involving Bubbles, I think they mainly show just how masterful the cartoonist Jeph Jacques’ writing and approach to character development has become. Every bit of dialog taking place between Bubbles and other characters (particularly Faye of course) is gold, often without a single word that could be changed. The sequence of scenes during the #3700′s through which Faye and Bubbles finally get together is the epitome of this and in my opinion the very best writing we’ve seen in QC.

The actual outcome of Faye and Bubbles winding up in a relationship with each other, along with all the constant hints and speculation and build-up leading up to it, now that I have much more mixed feelings about. It precisely puts its finger on one of the main ever-present aspects of the ethos of QC which I’ve complained about before more than once and wound up calling “sex-causality”. Part of me wishes I hadn’t spent as many words ranting about this issue and I’m still uncertain on exactly how I categorize it, as purely a personal distaste or something more objective that does happen in certain subcultures and is bad when pushed on members who are uncomfortable with it, or what. But I do think the slow development of Faye/Bubbles over the course of most of the past thousand comics deserves a brief discussion as an example. There are two prongs to this thing: the fact that Faye and Bubbles getting together was the outcome, and the intermittent banter of all of the other characters about that outcome through hundreds of comics in approaching it.

With regard to their getting together in a both romantic and sexual relationship, it would go against my principles to oppose something like this. That said, it’s a departure from what we knew about Faye (which, to QC’s credit, is openly acknowledged), I would imagine that in a universe with human-like still-made-of-metal AI such a thing would still be somewhat more unusual than it’s given credit for being in the comic. Then again, it’s almost impossible not to underestimate the variety and frequency of still-under-discussed sexualities that are out there (e.g. romantic love and sexual attraction towards metal objects is definitely a thing), and certainly it makes the story more interesting, which after all is part of the writer’s job. No, what I think bothers me here is what feels like an under-representation or under-recognition of profoundly intimate friendships that don’t at any point contain an element of one party wanting to sleep with the other -- does there have to be a sexual element to every relationship that’s deep? It was mainly for this reason, I guess, that once I saw a meaningful (platonic) relationship blossoming between Faye and Bubbles, and noticed how well it was written and how much good it was doing each of them, that I feel it was a really beautiful thing as it was and began actively rooting against the ship that most of the other characters were rooting for.

As for the speculation between the other characters, well, if you’ve been following QC and my posts on this issue like the one I linked to above (those of you who have even made it up to this point in this post!), then you might guess rightly that my main reaction was profound annoyance. I don’t like getting on my high horse about other mostly-inoffensive adults acting kind of immature because I’m trying to stay open to it possibly being a personal-taste thing and maybe mostly on my end, but, well, I thought a lot of the banter irritating in a way that perceived immaturity irritates me. These two comics epitomize what I find annoying, and the “You just... seem to care about her a lot, that’s all” line at the start of this one points to precisely my complaint about the existence of deep platonic friendships not being recognized. Anyway, by the time we got past the dinner conversation in the comics I just linked to, I was throwing up my hands and fully onboard with the Faye/Bubbles ship just to finally be done with all the excited speculative giggling. And as I said, when it finally did happen, the writing (including of the reactions of other characters) was fantastic.

To (finally) change the topic away from Bubbles, some of my emotional reaction to QC has shifted subtly while the last thousand comics were coming out. The period of publication from #3001 to #4000 happens to have spanned a segment of my life (which will hopefully be ending soon) in which I’ve felt quite lonely and isolated. And watching all the interactions going on in the QC world makes me feel... not nostalgic exactly because I was never really part of a social circle quite like Marten’s... but rather bittersweet because of how much I’d like to be in so many ways. QC presents a fictional environment that in the confines of my brain I often call a “social utopia” or, perhaps slightly less ridiculously, something like a “social circle / subcultural utopia”. It’s poor terminology because the QC universe on the whole isn’t a utopia in any sense of the word -- in fact there are plenty of social ills that form the backdrop of many storylines -- and even when confined to looking at how the particular social circle operates “utopia” doesn’t seem like an appropriate term. But the variety of people in the social group, the places, they meet, and the way they interact with each other all seems to click together and operate in what I would consider -- and I believe the artist Jeph Jacques would consider -- to be pretty close to idyllic. I like especially how much diversity there is among the characters, both in their backgrounds and interests as well as their quirks, and how completely at ease and accepting they are of each other in spite of or almost because of them. There’s this vibe of “We’re all a little weird but we share the same values about how to be decent human beings, so let’s all revel in our weirdness together and be there for each other through thick and thin!” (Of course there are some bad characters lying on the periphery and kinda-sorta-dicks like Sven who are mostly excluded from the group, but that’s not the core of the world.) With few exceptions, conflicts are resolved in a very systematic way and almost immediately (with only a couple of exceptions that did eventually end happily).

And as a matter of fact, even during times when I was fairly socially happy, I was never part of any group that was so exemplary in this particular way. But reading QC, which is hopefully at least somewhat drawn from the cartoonist’s own experiences, sort of gives me hope or at least a very concrete means of imagining such a crowd. And even if I did feel the need to gripe from time to time about what I call the “sex-casual” norms that permeate the group interactions, honestly in the grand scheme of things that’s just something I could live with or even enjoy if comes through in a non-pushy, non-conformist way, in order to be part of such a welcoming and healthy family.

[princessmans]

About that “Return to Murder House” twist... (SPOILERS)

My first reaction to the revelation that Tate had been used by the Murder House as a vessel to create Michael was a mixture of disappointment and relief. On one hand, I loved being able to enjoy Tate running down the stairs to Violet like a little kid at Christmas, but I also felt like one of the greatest villains ever portrayed on screen had been cheapened by what felt a tad like fan fiction. 

To be honest, I always felt like Tate being manipulated by the house was a possibility based on some of the direction, dialogue and acting choices. It was what I WANTED to be true, but not knowing if this was the case, or if he really was just a psychopath, was what made him so scary to me and I felt like that fear had been taken away by a definitive explanation. 

However, the more I have thought about it and reflected on the events of Murder House and early episodes of Apocalypse, the more I think it works and is actually kinda brilliant. It makes Michael an absolutely terrifying villain and makes Murder House disturbing in a whole new way. I have compiled just a few examples here. Obviously, since this is Tate and AHS we are talking about, some topics may be triggering. 

Tate’s First Therapy Session

Most of what Tate says in his first session with Ben appears to be symptoms of some sort of mental illness - cutting and violent fantasies specifically. But analyzing his dialogue with “Return to Murder House” in mind makes what he says even more chilling. 

“I prepare for the noble war. I'm calm, I know the secret. I know whats coming and I know no one can stop me not even myself.” 

His mention of a noble war echoes Michael’s dialogue in Apocalypse whenever he talks about fulfilling his purpose and even the way he believes he is purifying/re-building the world through nuclear war. Additionally, Tate saying that even he cannot stop himself could be interpreted as pointing toward some form of possession where he truly is not in control of his actions. 

“The Indians believed that blood hold all the bad spirits, they would cut themselves once a month in ceremonies, let the spirits go free. There’s something smart about that. I like that.”

Again, this line - and the way that Tate does admit to self harm- can be interpreted as another symptom of the emotional pain he is obviously in. But now I can’t help but be freaked out by the idea that he subconsciously knew he was being possessed or at least manipulated by some sort of evil spirit. Tate even sees a vision of himself covered in blood - which he ignores and is never explained but introduces the idea of dual personas. 

The Rubber Man Reveal Scene

I have always found the Rubber Man reveal scene to be particularly strange in the way it seems to cut between two separate takes with two completely different choices on Evan Peters’ part - especially since we see him lower the mask twice. At first he looks horrified at what he just did, then it cuts to a more determined, villainous expression before cutting back to horror. 

In retrospect, the editing choice could be interpreted as revealing not just Tate’s inner conflict, but dual spirits in one body or at least a visualization of how Tate is being manipulated. If he was fully possessed in the way Mary Eunice was in Asylum then there is a whole other horrifying option to consider. If he was completely controlled by a demonic force, than Vivien is not the only victim of rape in the scenario - Tate is as well. However, I tend to lean towards more of a demonic influence and manipulation over full-on possession for reasons I will explain later. 

Inability to Kill Gabriel Ramos

Everything Tate does - apart from murdering his peers, but more on that later - is for a specific purpose. He either wants to appease or avenge ghosts in the house (Nora or Larry’s family who immolated themselves), help create and protect the Anti-Christ, or protect Violet from physical and emotional harm. His desire to kill Gabriel in order to give Violet a new boyfriend appears strong but he is ultimately unable to kill him. 

This final violent act occurs after Michael has left the house and is in the care of Constance - supporting Madison’s theory that the evil inside Tate did leave with Michael. Without it, Tate is unable to go through with the murder, despite how much he may want to in order to “help” Violet.

Not Remembering the Westfield Massacre

Tate’s claims to not remember killing 15 of his peers can easily be interpreted as denial or straight up lying in order to not lose Violet - though Evan Peters’ raw emotional vulnerability in some scenes has always made it difficult for me to not believe him. Re-watching these scenes now puts a whole different spin on his claims. 

Could he not remember what he did because he was not fully in control? I have always found the skull makeup in his visions to be an interesting choice, seeing as he did not wear it during the actual shooting. Another Tumblr user suggested that the skull makeup was his subconscious’ way of representing the devil that was influencing him and I agree that it comes across that way. 

Even if he does remember the murders on some level, he is unable to say why he did it- apart from his first claim that he did it to save his victims from the pain of the world. The scene where Violet finally confronts him about this shows him at his most vulnerable as he repeats “Why would I do that?” Again, this could be further denial or lying, but maybe he really doesn’t know. 

In what I always believed to be the most harrowing and disturbing scene of the season, Tate is shot to death by a SWAT team in his bedroom before one of the officers asks him why he did it. His death before he can answer has always been profoundly moving to me, not just because the audience is not given an answer as to why Tate did it, but because it reflects how the motivation behind school shootings is often left unknown. 

Now I just find this scene really depressing. In order for Michael to be born, Tate needed to die in the house in order to become a ghost. It is possible that the house/the darkness/the devil manipulated him to commit a mass shooting and return to the house and pull out a gun so he would be killed. 

Warning: The rest of this section enters the realm of even wilder speculation and theorizing less supported by facts. Skip if you want.

Of course, Tate could have just killed himself in the house, but it is my personal theory that in order for the Anti-Christ to be born, the spirit who fathered him would have to have committed horrible acts. In my mind it is sort of like Voldemort having to kill people in order to split his soul in order to make Horcruxes. I actually theorized this before “Return to Murder House” aired but I really don’t have anything to support this. Moving on. 

Michael Langdon is Hella Scary

I started to wonder if Tate’s actions were going to be explored while watching the first episodes of Apocalypse, especially after Michael delivered the following (amazing) line:

“I’ve never been a fan of getting my hands dirty. Learned that from my father. Always more fun to entice men and women to dirty deeds. Confirms what I’ve always believed...That all people, if given the right pressures or stimulus, are evil motherfuckers.”

Michael, according to Cody Fern, is the human form of Satan - which makes sense as a further perversion of the Holy Trinity. This means Satan, Michael and the Darkness that influenced Tate are one and the same. Even in the bunker we see Michael’s power over people to do awful things - Venable wipes out the Outpost with the apples and snakes Michael sent, and Mr. Gallant is tricked into brutally murdering his grandmother. 

This is what makes Michael the new most terrifying villain in AHS for me. Yes, he can make people’s heads explode, killed a great many small animals, and can literally wipe souls from existence. But what really scares me is his ability to “see into the dark places” of people’s souls and use that knowledge to manipulate people’s actions. 

This is why I personally find the explanation of Tate being full on possessed less interesting than him being manipulated. It seems to me that Satan/the darkness/the house/Michael whatever you want to call it, knew exactly what would drive Tate to murder and rape. So maybe Tate’s life would have been different if he had lived in a different house. Instead he was used by the Devil to create the Anti-Christ - completely ruining the lives of Tate, the Harmons, Chad, Patrick, 15 innocent students, and Constance in the process. There is even the possibility that the human side of Michael - the side that wanted to be good and grieved his grandmother - is also being destroyed by the demon inside him. That is pretty evil if you ask me. 

This leaves Tate’s character and morality in a weird place. He is certainly not a hero as he succumbed to the influence of the Darkness - even if he was possessed, he is merely a victim. But he isn’t a villain either. Redemption may be too strong a word, but I personally believe he deserves a little happiness with Violet. He even seems to have forgiven his abusive mother (why is no one talking about if she deserved to be with her children?) and has worked out a lot of his issues with Ben. I hope we see more of him.

So while I may be a little disappointed that Tate is no longer the greatest villain on AHS, his story builds up a villain who is shaping up to be really something special. 

Of course, there are still 4 episodes left. We may find out that Madison was lying, the magic dust was cocaine, Tate is actually evil and everything I just said is completely pointless. 

[frumfrumfroo]

how do you think so many people missed the reylo in tfa? do you think they went too subtle with the ship or was it audience bias about the other theories like rey/sky? i'm asking cause i was one of those unaware people, tlj reylo hit me like a truck and now i'm shipping it in a weird anxious way, like i'm seriously worried about canon for the first time in any of my fandoms because antis will be more smug and horrible to everyone if it isn't endgame.

I think it’s mainly that most people just take movies at face value and aren’t going to notice much foreshadowing until after the thing being foreshadowed actually happens. Which is the normal way to watch movies! Casual audiences don’t consciously consider stuff like narrative structure and what each plot development would be ‘saying’ in the wider context of the story. The majority of fans who were poring over the film weren’t reading it as a piece of storytelling setting up a SW-appropriate overall message and an emotional arc, they were reading it in light of all their baggage with the GFFA universe and trying to ‘outsmart’ the film. But these are simple epic stories, not intricately plotted world-building-heavy political thrillers. The big ‘twist’ in ESB is character-driven, it challenges Luke more than anything else could have, and it sets up the ultimate themes (love and compassion will triumph over hate and violence, it’s never too late). Obsessing about details without looking at thematic coherence is how you end up with the exact bad takes so many people had such unwarranted confidence in. How much did the OT explain about the Force or Galactic politics? Practically nothing. It doesn’t matter. Fans combing through looking for bloodlines and Snoke origins and esoteric Force lore were focussing on something the films have never cared about.

How would being a Skywalker challenge Rey? It wouldn’t. It hands her what she thinks she wants on a platter with no struggle or character growth necessary. It’s narratively useless and leaves us with no stakes. The bad guy is… your cousin!!! isn’t dramatic. It doesn’t radically redefine her worldview or force her to re-evaluate her choices, values, and place in the universe. Vader being Anakin did all of those things for Luke. The point isn’t ‘secretly related’ as something we tick off on an obligatory checklist of clichés, in the OT that reveal kicked the protagonist off a cliff and changed everything. Shock value isn’t what makes it effective, it’s the implications. People who insist on these convoluted theories are failing to think about it as A Story and to ask these questions about ‘why?’. It’s character-driven, it has very limited screen time, it has to be accessible to children- they don’t waste time building relationships which don’t matter. Rey’s most significant, most challenging relationship is with Ben. They are the thematic centre of the trilogy.

When I say it’s obvious, I mean it’s obvious in an out-of-universe, English major kind of way. The way the film is structured, the way Rey and Ben are contrasted, the use of classic imagery, the very standard way he is cast as a sympathetic, romantic figure who must be saved in order to not… ruin the OT, basically. The careful way their interactions are handled, especially that being in her presence always makes him more vulnerable and reveals more of his humanity. They married Rey’s arc to his and that can’t be backed off. If it wasn’t going to be romantic, they would have had history. Either they’d have been siblings or they would have been childhood friends (now that would be a rehash). The most powerful storytelling connection for unrelated strangers on opposite sides of a conflict is a romance, particularly when platonic love has already failed both. Coupling that with Rey’s driving desire being to give and receive the unconditional love she was denied as a child and both of them having the defining lack in their lives be loneliness… I mean, guess where this is going. Two sad, lonely, attractive young people with isolating special powers who don’t know their place in the world but do profoundly understand each other when no one else does in an epic fantasy space opera are not going to be just buds.

I understand being worried, because even though I am 100% confident that a redemption and happy Reylo ending is where the story demands to go and that it has been deliberately set up, writers can and do make horrible nonsensical decisions. They could fuck it up. It seems vanishingly unlikely that would be allowed to happen because if they were cowards they wouldn’t have gone there in the first place, but I understand the fear. The Internet would be unbearable and the smug assholes would declare themselves right all along.

But, as long as they aren’t hacks and the writing is intentional (and… it has to be. I mean, I didn’t think it was that debatable even after TFA, but now it’s really not debatable) then there is every reason to be optimistic they will follow through. If they have any respect for the message of the franchise at all, any integrity, they gotta.

ETA: And I should probably say, the reason they write things like this, with symbolic foreshadowing etc. is because it makes the eventual resolution feel inevitable and more deeply satisfying. You picked up subconsciously that track was being laid for this before it happened, so when it does it feels ~right~. And with Reylo in particular, it needed to be subtext first because it’s a) part one of a trilogy and b) a high concept enemies to lovers ship for which we have to establish the stakes/obstacles/thematic weight before making the attraction explicit. It’s a grand love story about healing, not a ‘bad boys are sexy’ Harlequin novel; we don’t want the impression it’s just sexual or shallow.

Also, I mean, compare them in TFA to Act 1 of Beauty and the Beast. If not for the prologue telling us the Beast needs to find love, it’s pretty much exactly as explicit with the fact that there will be a romance between those two. That is, you could absolutely fail to see it coming if you take everything at face value.

[kendrixtermina]

Actual Nightmares I have had of you

The human subconscious is profoundly weird

I.

Call me Kronos‘ Daughter; Daughter-of-Saturn.  

I’m never asked you to be my friend; You needn’t even like me. All I ever wanted is that you leave me be. Live and let live. That’s all it ever expected, that’s what my heart still screams from its depths down to its very bottom. But you wouldn’t, neither you nor the schoolyard bullies who came like sharks to pick and suck at the bloody marks you left on me.

I come home from that and it takes me a while to realize the thickness in the air. Slowly but steadily it dawns on me when no one responds and coldness meets me from all fronts.

My mother and siblings make sure to communicate their wrath through my slow understanding, and I scramble to piece together what I did wrong.

I was never good at understanding what displeased people; Wretchedly I ask for an explanation., but the answer is always:

“You know what you did” like my uncertainty is just a guise that only adds to the insult.

What was it? What did I do?

I can’t lose the last and only people that have the least bit concern for me.

Then after a while, it crystallized:

You have once again told lies about me;

You did it often enough for it to haunt me into my dreams; Somehow, that scarred me more than the beatings ever did. Somehow, at some point, I must have displeased the fickle volcano god and now it’s my turn to be flung down the crater, but that’s beside the point:  

I have no love to call my own.

I have no love – at any point, you could go behind my back and take it away as you please.

No one will ever believe me. You will go behind my back, and I can do nothing other than helpless, clueless fumbling like a bee caught in jelly and trying to fly through it, dead stop at the glass of the window.

You once claimed I had rudely dared to snub you as you drove by in your very generic red little car in the most common color there is. For months I felt my hairs standing on ends all the twelve bazillion times I saw a little red care, careful, careful! It might be you, and you might get displeased.

II.

We are walking down a wide street in the old part of some European city; We were simply wont to check out the historic streets whenever we went someone new.

But through we stand on ordinary cobblestone, the buildings left and right are comprised of stark black sharp alien shapes, warped curves of dark spikes pointing everywhere, crawling their way up like whimsical paper cutouts or shock-frosted currents, in place of ordinary rows and houses.

You keep my hand clamped up tight; No use protesting that I’m already eighteen.

The sharp shapes branch forward of the walls like metal flames or dark trees; Afterwards I’d wonder if this is the physical shape that might be taken by fear and hatred if they could harden into solids like ice rock and metal.

I remember this plan to mark a dumping site for nuclear waste to that residents of the far fure would understand that it’s dangerous and not get the impression that here’s something exciting to dig upon – one of the ideas they considered was filling a field with wide spikes poking out of the floor, like the places you’re not supposed to stand on in a video game:

‘This is no place of honor.

Nothing valuable lies here’

Nothing valuable is buried in my soul in the oppressive shadow of your presence. Apart from the spike houses this has been a very boring dream. I’ve had much more exciting ones far away from our kitchens or living rooms, and if I’m in them at all I can never recall filling this strong shame.

We reach a sort of view platform, we look down through a black front of glass, square reflective windows, out over the boulevard of thorns.  You’re sour and grumpy, you’re shouting at everyone, and everyone throws death glares at me. This happens often enough for the instances to blend into a generic good of pain and shame.

Mother scolds me scornfully at some point.

III.

It’s like I can feel you coming long before you do. It’s like you drop the temperature when you come into a room.

You were there, laughing at me in my sleep, I tried to calm myself down and shrug it off because I was meaning to enjoy the day, and there you are: The next day, my mother saw it fit to invite you to my birthday celebration. I’m not sure if I explicitly made it clear that you were not to be invited, I thought it was obvious, I didn’t want to be the one to dredge it out and taint a joyful occasion with pain and regret.

I wanted to go to a fucking cafe with my bloody family, can’t I have that?

You don’t even have to do anything for a scene to be caused; I do you the honor myself, you’ve pavlov trained me pretty well, monkey see, monkey fear. Like clockwork.

It’s like being locked in a cage with a saber-tooth tiger.

I can only stand it because I downed a glass of wine first thing before the entree.

And I curse myself all the way back: I should have known! I should have known! Why didn’t I say anything?

IV.

This dream was actually interesting, right where you showed up.

I’m driving a car, but because I don’t know what that’s like it’s more like a go-cart or a tricycle, or a bumper car from the fun-fair. There’s a lot of sudden acceleration and I’m needing my feet to keep myself steady in the seat.

You come in through some memory of driving out into the country up a mountain, and of a building that’s like an abbey or a castle where you used to work. Or maybe it’s just a hospital and I’m tripping over your existence because you worked in a different one, or it’s that visit to a mountaintop restaurant that was splendid apart from the fact that you were there.

There’s a hospital on the mountaintop, or that sort of complicated building, but when I look past the precipices, held only by a strange gravity that seems to be coming from the cliff face, I see not the valley but a folded landscape, with houses and church towers but also house-like structures in crystalline fractal squares.

I could pat my subconscious on the back for this one, were it not that after I drove home, coming back, somehow, to my second apartment and the bed of my ex-boyfriend, and as soon as I lie down, you burst open the door and start screaming and complaining about all that I did wrong.

In the shadows it’s my bedroom where I’m a naked adult woman but where the light touches there linger echos of my childhood bedroom with its metal bunk bed that my ex-boyfriend surely wouldn’t have fit it, my rugs, and certainly its door.

You come and scream and barge in because you’ve never respected a closed door in your life, in into my dwelling which ought to have been mine and a place that you can’t come inside.

You never came there safe in my dreams, not in all the four years I lived there,

and yet I sat there raging and naked and pleading with all that is right and wonder, how is it that you’re still allowed to come here now that I have my own life? How is it that you’re still allowed to haunt me well into my adulthood and all my sacred spaces?

How is it that you get to loose your spitting mouth and tell me all I’m doing wrong in my own damn house?

And I awake with a chill lodged in my spine.

I don’t actually have these dreams of you very often, you know, but when I do, you can bet that I’ll be useless for most of the morning, if not the entire day. There'll be a dark cloud hanging over my mood and all attempts at concentration come up frazzled. Sometimes I can will myself to do something out of sheer spite but its never as romantic as advertized and I have to remind myself, quite forcibly, that this doesn’t mean that nothing I did to get over your splendid childcare through my wonderful teenage years wasn’t entirely worthless or that I’m not stronger at all.

At some point it stopped feeling like that – it’s just annoying.

I don’t want to be mad, not even that, not anymore, I just want to be twenty-something.

Why do you get to eat my days still, while doing nothing? You’re probably working on some island in the north seas right now, some gray old man I’d hardly recognize.

My face in the mirror looks like the you I actually remember. I smear it full of makeup so it doesn’t.

V.

I’m laying somewhere, I don’t know, a bed, a couch; For some reason there’s christmas decorations on. Maybe it’s taken from a memory, some old half buried fragment of our one-time living room.

Then you come and there is screaming.

I don’t remember how because somehow, in some way, when you come there is always screaming. I think I was idly chatting with my siblings just before but that doesn’t matter because all that disintegrates, and you come, lumbering half-bald boxer-shorts-clad ogre that you are, and somehow, through some excuse, you mock my fearful measly little flesh as you hold me down, and deeper than your hands beat the spiked flails of your words.

I don’t have the courage to hold against you in earnest, marvelously concerned that you’ll break my little heart.

I slap your face and you overtake with with your violence,

I spit back taunts and you eviscerate me in humiliation.

I quote Melville in your face, and I can’t get it right, my stumbling words accomplish little more than to make you laugh.

I spit my last breath into hell’s heart and can’t seem to stab at anything despite the hate that only boils my veins.

I spread my legs in your face, in the hope that the smell will make you back off in shock, but it only confirms all you’ve ever thought of me, and I scream helpless beneath your blows:

“Just leave me alone! Just leave me alone!

You may beat me, mock me, debase me, as long as you leave me alone!”

I cry in desperation:

“Just leave me alone!”

Leave me alone.

Thanks to you, that’s all I ever asked of people. 

[gaiatheorist]

Oven-cleaner.

(I woke up, on the sofa, at 2am. It took me quite a while to figure out it was 2am, because my phone had fallen out of my pocket, and had to be excavated from the death-grip of the tangled fleece blanket. Nothing quite like the panic of not being able to find your phone, is there? It’s half past three, now, and the palpitations have just about subsided, but I’m on my second coffee, so they’ll be back soon enough. I fell asleep during the rugby, as well, so didn’t get to see the end of England’s unbeaten run. *Face.*)

It took a while to work my way around to checking ‘On This Day’, not because I’m consciously deciding not to look at it, but because the ex was ‘on’ Fakebook, old habits die hard, and, just like I couldn’t bear to be in the same room as him, if his Fakebook ‘chat’ icon is illuminated, I duck out, and come back later. Apart from the awkward five minutes on a Sunday evening, when he collects the boy, and ‘another bag of stuff’ from the spare room (we’re all just waiting for him to take the bag of bin-contents that will have been hastily snatched off a door-handle and thrown in there at some point.), the sum-total of my contact with him is usually a text, or chat-message, asking me if I need any more crickets for the bearded dragon that he said he’d take to his flat, and hasn’t.

I browsed some Guardian articles until his chat ‘light’ went out, one of them was about the resurgence of the ‘hippy’. Womb-appreciation circles, and using vinegar to clean the toilet, fair to say I’ve done my eyebrow-yoga this morning.I do appreciate my womb, it stored the boy until he was big enough to come out and breathe air, but there are two or three days every month when I would happily eviscerate and defenestrate it. (Smirking, because when the boy was a tiny thing, one of my friends used to come over on a Thursday evening, and clean my house while I had a bath, she cleaned extra-hard when she had PMT.)

One of the posts from two years ago has my face on it, if I could be bothered, I’d delete it, I’m in that weird stage I go through, where I don’t like my face. Deleting the Fakebook-photo of my face won’t make me like my face any more, and my face will still be as it is, this stage passes. 

Further down, in amongst the “I am going to clean x, or iron y!” and the incessant plugging of the ex’s bands, there’s me cleaning the oven. I’d check back, to see how many years that makes it since I cleaned the oven, but there will have been other undocumented attempts to remove the layers of burned-on shite, when I’d end up blistering my fingers to such an extent that I couldn’t type. Housework is self-harm, kids, don’t do it. Actually, DO do it, just don’t leave it until it reaches a state where it might be easier just to move house. (Or do, I’m not the boss of you.) There’s a pointless rumination-aside about whether I subconsciously ‘spring clean’, maybe I do, and maybe I don’t.

I’m not ‘houseproud’, I’m profoundly disorganised, bordering on chaotic. I am not a ‘tidy’ person, I am a messy person, accept that, and move on. Is it paradoxical that my stomach is already starting to knot-up at the thought of the boy being here for his three-week Easter break? Not the boy himself, he’s lovely, and I’m certain we’ll have many conversations that taper off, because we’re laughing so hard we can’t speak. What I’m not looking forward to is the trail of devastation and clutter he leaves in his wake. He has some of my ‘chaos’, you see, we’re both multi-strand inattentive, or over-attentive, depending on how you look at it. I’m learning to rein mine in, when I ‘catch’ myself trying to do four things at once, I try to pull back, and focus on one. Slow progress, and “Which of these things is the most important?” is a difficult question to answer sometimes, when I find myself staring at yet another bastard teaspoon in the airing cupboard, with both laptops open on different websites, and no idea when I last ate. It’s the lack of structure making me worse, I’ll be ‘better’ when I have something resembling a routine. (Yes, Lorna, the rehab-lady, I’d LOVE to draw up a colour-coded schedule.)

Off-on-one again, that’s how easily I distract myself. Last week, I needed distracting, from life-changing decisions I knew I wasn’t stable enough to make. I’d already mostly-made them, I know what I want to keep, and what I need to let go of, this road will be rocky before it smooths out again, but I’ll deal with that, just like I deal with everything else. I distracted, I deflected, to try to give myself enough lucid head-space. This little oxymoron mowed the lawn, to stop ‘men’ encroaching on my I-can-do-this world, and cleaned the bastard oven, because I dry my laundry in the kitchen, and was sick of my pants smelling of ‘cooking.’ (Slow hand-clap, there, because, with the arrival of ‘spring’, I can use the clothes-line, now I won’t look like one of the raptors from Jurassic Park rippling through the grass...)

Half past four in the morning, and I’m metaphorically kicking myself for drinking three beers (and that can of lager from the fridge), I knew the beer would upset my stomach, and it has. Between my uterus throwing the usual tantrum, and the remnants of the beer, and half a moussaka from Friday lunch-time, there are some fairly epic contractions, contortions, and noises happening. (Seriously, I just sneezed, and was mildly concerned I might shit myself, that’s how bad it is, nothing physically abnormal on any of the scans, though.) I knew the beer would do this, in the same way as I ‘knew’ bicarb and vinegar would clean the oven, without chemically peeling the skin off my fingers. The Fakebook post said I’d mixed soda crystals with oil, and then squirted lemon juice on top. I’m calling myself all kinds of knobs here, because soda crystals are still corrosive, not as bad as the nasty stuff in the spray-cans, but you still shouldn’t spend extended periods with your bare hands in contact with them. Cleaning my oven is always an ‘extended’ task, maybe I should print out the Good Housekeeping guide to daily/weekly/monthly chores, LORNA?

(Looping, I can’t/won’t direct my rage at what I’m really angry at, so Lorna’s getting it.)

‘Then’, I was narked at cleaning the oven because the ex was probably lounging on the sofa, adjusting his nuts, and shoving crisp-bags down the cushions. Now, it’s only my own burned-and-left detritus that stinks-out the whole house. (Must actually replace the smoke-detector batteries, instead of taking them out of the drawer to do it, and then ‘tidying’ them back away.) I’m not ‘just’ scruffy, part of it is the brain damage, another normalisation of one of my exhausting abnormalities. I’m a bit scared of cooking, and food in general. The ‘what if I choke?’ anxiety is a fairly regular feature, and has mostly-replaced the ‘what if I get so constipated that I rupture the third aneurysm?’ Grim. Humans need food, right? I know that, but I’ve cut myself, and burned myself, and set things on fire so many times in the last two years; preparing food is an ordeal. The anxiety about dropping ‘this’, or setting ‘that’ on fire grips my guts to such an extent that I’m essentially force-feeding myself, and willing myself not to vomit up food-I-don’t-want. (Also mildly terrified of vomiting now, because I associate that with the haemorrhage, welcome to me, it’s the world’s shittiest circus.) Sometimes, I DO what the Mother-in-law does, and wash the dishes while I’m still chewing my last mouthful of food. Sometimes I don’t, and I’ve NEVER been able to give the oven a once-over with a damp cloth after every use, because I just don’t have the energy.

Dull, unlike the inside of my oven, which is now mostly-sparkling. 

[queserasera2001]

September 15, 2020

I’ve never thought of myself as a shallow, judgmental person. And I guess maybe everyone is more judgmental than they would like to admit, but I’ve always separated how I think of others and how I think of myself as two different things. But they are so much more connected than I think I would like to admit. And this is a really painful, embarrassing, and bizarre realization to bring to light due to the way all it logically connects. At the end of the day I think that, maybe the way we feel about ourselves doesn’t determine how we treat others, but I think they are at least connected. At least part of loving others is loving yourself. 

Me and my family mostly, but some friends too, genuinely have fun judging or criticizing others. Pointing out funny features. Comparing ourselves humorously to homeless people, funny old people, etcetera. And even the act of writing this out is excruciating. I think an aspect of this is healthy, the not taking life or yourself too seriously, and just the humor in general that makes life bearable. But I think subconsciously it’s adding to the fire of shame and hatred I aim toward myself. Simply because it brings attention to physical attractiveness and looks in general; because by judging “good” and “bad” looking people, I highten my own subconscious awareness that people are doing the same thing to me. That I could be, and probably am, being labelled, talked about, or thought about in the exact same humorously or judgmental way. And the haunting fear I have regarding what people are secretly thinking me, of unexpressed negative opinions, may be in my top greatest fears. It’s what makes me lose sleep, fuels the anxiety that runs through my blood and crawls under my skin. 

It’s even a selfish thought to begin with; be kind and tender to others for your OWN sake, not only because it is morally the correct way to go through the world and live your life. But it’s the truth at the end of the day. I am so ashamed at the way I dissect the face of whoever I look at, and I have a feeling in my gut that it is not normal exactly. I dissect every part of their face, each feature, and if they look “weird” to me, I pinpoint why. I feel happy when I look at celebrities or actors, dissect their face, and find imperfections. And my heart sinks so deep when I look at a Kardashian, an indie actress, the newest girlfriend of an extremely attractive male celebrity, and my eyes just find perfection. Or if not perfection, balance, and perfect idiosyncrasy, girls who are interesting looking in an intriguing beautiful way; simply women who, unlike how I see myself, are desirable. 

In summation, judging others (positive or negative) simply reinforces in myself that I have reason to hate myself, physical and otherwise. It not only makes my self dislike increase, but I believe it genuinely solidifies the warrant behind this belief, as it makes me a worse human. I find peace however, in the fact that I genuinely do not think my opinion of others should affect them at any capacity. My opinion of physical attractiveness is so profoundly unimportant, that maybe the opinion of people who have negative impressions of how I look’s opinions are insignificant as well. Just as I would never wish anyone to let my opinion hold weight in their self-esteem, there is no reason why I should allow outward opinion to penetrate me.

I cannot fathom how people who have been bullied or verbally abused regarding their looks feel. No one, ever, has called me ugly. Yet it is still such a deeply internalized belief of mine. I cannot imagine their pain, how awful it would be to fight those words from going deep into your heart.

When I was at my most naive, most confident young girl, I don’t remember looking and picking apart faces the way I do now. I think most healthy people take peoples faces and person at a whole, which is something I want to strive towards again. Maybe it’s body dysmorphia, maybe it’s not. Although the idea of having a medical diagnosis that renders the negative way I see myself as unreliable sounds nice, I’m not sure I care. And I don’t think it matters at the end of the day. 

If not for my own sake, I want to love myself better so that I can love those around me the way I know they utterly and completely, inside and out, deserve to be loved.